Last week, a Ninth Circuit panel declined to consider an appeal from undercover journalist David Daleiden regarding a $195,000 penalty he’ll have to shell out to his pro-abortion opponents.

Daleiden, who famously exposed alleged baby body part trafficking in 2015 within the abortion industry, including heavyweight Planned Parenthood, was hit with the penalty for using video footage which allegedly violated his dubious gag order.

“The federal judge presiding over related civil lawsuits, District Judge William Orrick, had held that criminal defense counsel’s use of the videos violated a gag order he imposed in one of the federal civil actions. Daleiden and his defense counsel appealed, arguing that Orrick had improperly imposed a criminal contempt penalty without granting the accused due process and that the federal civil injunction should not apply to Daleiden’s state criminal proceeding,” a statement from the Thomas More Society, representing Daleiden, outlined.

The Ninth Circuit also denied an appeal to have Daleiden’s federal civil cases reassigned to an impartial judge who does not have a history of public support for Planned Parenthood, as Judge Orrick does.

“You’ll recall that Judge Orrick has close ties to Planned Parenthood, and his wife is an outspoken abortion activist. This is another frustrating setback for David — especially after … the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear our appeal of the ‘gag order’ injunction Judge Orrick hit David with at the request of the National Abortion Federation,” noted Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, in a press release last year.

“In our view, unfortunately, the Ninth Circuit misread the district court order. It saw things in it that weren’t there and overlooked things that were, with the unhappy consequence of upholding two injustices to our client,” Thomas More Society Special Counsel Sarah Pitlyk said in a statement to The Daily Wire, last week.

“First, Mr. Daleiden and his criminal defense counsel remain subject to an exorbitant penalty for doing nothing other than trying to defend him against baseless, politically motivated criminal charges,” she noted….

The above comes from a June 12 story on the Daily Wire.