Yesterday, David Barton told his Wallbuilders’ Live audience that the Obama administration has not prosecuted a single case of child pornography. He said, “there has not been a single prosecution of child pornography under this administration. There were many under previous administrations; this administration just shut it down.”
I also pointed out that Barton has made this claim before. A quick review of the press releases for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the DOJ’s website reveals numerous actions by the Obama administration to prosecute crimes involving children (see 2009, 2010,2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014).
Today, I asked the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs for the number of prosecutions during the Obama administration. Spokesman Peter Carr sent the figures for years 2009-2014 . The number of defendants per fiscal year are as follows:
2009 – 2,075
2010 – 2,058
2011 – 2,254
2012 – 2,012
2013 – 2,331
2014 – 2,129
The crimes involved are described by the Justice Department as:
18 U.S.C. § 2251- Sexual Exploitation of Children (Production of child pornography)
18 U.S.C. § 2251A- Selling and Buying of Children
18 U.S.C. § 2252- Certain activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors (Possession, distribution and receipt of child pornography)
18 U.S.C. § 2252A- certain activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography
18 U.S.C. § 2260- Production of sexually explicit depictions of a minor for importation into the United States
Mr. Carr didn’t have figures for previous years but I did find this article also citing Mr. Carr in 2007. According to an article in the Washington Post, defendants prosecuted for child porn increased from 594 during President Clinton final year to 1,549 in FY 2006. I wasn’t able to quickly find how many prosecutions took place in 2007 and 2008, but I think the picture is plain enough.
One must try very hard to be as wrong as Barton is here. Barton says the Obama administration hasn’t prosecuted a single case; the Justice department says that nearly 13,000 cases have been prosecuted.
I believe Mr. Barton owes his audience and the hard working law enforcement professionals an apology.