Breitbart claims he got Sherrod video from man "worried about being attacked like Joe the plumber"

HANNITY: Now Sherrod claims she was taken out of context and had some harsh words for the Obama White House today saying her resignation was forced and came only after several harassing phone calls from an administration official.

But Tom Vilsack, secretary of Agriculture, is not backing down. He released another statement today saying, quote, "There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA and we strongly condemn any active discrimination against any person."

Now in addition we are getting word from a White House official that President Obama was briefed on the circumstances behind Sherrod's removal and that he fully supports Secretary Vilsack's decision.

As for the NAACP, now they initially released a statement in which they explicitly sided with the administration saying, quote, "According to her remarks, she mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race. We are appalled by her actions... her actions were shameful."

But now the NAACP is changing its tune and blaming all of this on — who else — Fox News. Now a statement released just a short time ago says, quote, "We have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party activist Andrew Breitbart into believing she had harmed white farmers because of racial bias."

And they go on to say, quote, "This just shows the lengths to which extremist elements will go to discredit legitimate opposition."

However, it's important to note that the Fox News Channel did not make any mention of this story yesterday on the air until after Shirley Sherrod had already lost her job after Secretary Vilsack had already drawn his own conclusions — conclusions that the president apparently agreed with.

Joining me now with reaction is the founder of BigGovernment.com, Breitbart.com, and that was the website that first posted the video, the one and only, the infamous, Andrew Breitbart.

Welcome back.

ANDREW BREITBART, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: Thank you, Sean.

HANNITY: All right. Serious stuff. Why don't we start at the beginning? How did you get in contact with this video and the posting? Why don't you just give us the behind-the-scene?

BREITBART: An individual in Georgia who is worried of — worried about being exposed and attacked like Joe the plumber reached out to me. And I believe — now I figured out where the e-mail was in early April of this year — to tell me about this video.

It was something that I thought was somewhat news worthy but really didn't pursue. But when I saw that the NAACP last week was going to reassert the falsehood —

HANNITY: Right.

BREITBART: The provable falsehood that the n-word was hurled by Tea Party people as part of a resolution to condemn the Tea Party.

HANNITY: Yes.

BREITBART: I thought this is outrageous because the Tea Party Federation sent a letter to the Congressional Black Caucus saying they wanted to investigate it. They do not want to talk about the exculpatory evidence that shows that the n-word did not happen.

And so I told Ben Jealous of the NAACP, you want to divide this country on race? You want to keep negatively branding the Tea Party, constantly asking, are they racist, are they racist, are they racist?

That is an act of sending a message — negative branding — to the American people and to black people that these are people to be feared.

HANNITY: All right —

BREITBART: It is a technique of propaganda.

HANNITY: Hang on. Hang on. I just want get some facts on the table and then — I want your opinion on everything else associated with it. All right, but — so you have this tape since April?

BREITBART: I didn't have the tape. I had recognition that it existed.

HANNITY: It existed. OK.

BREITBART: And the man told me about it. And he tried to send it to me and it came on a disc and it didn't show up. I said this is annoying. So when the NAACP thing happened, I found his phone number, I called him up, and he sent me to — two excerpts of the video.

HANNITY: OK. And the allegation now of the left is alright, hang on a second, even though she said — and she said she harbored these views in this tape. She described how she racially discriminated against the white farmer. That's not in dispute. That's on the video. She's not disputing that.

BREITBART: And she described the white man as the other — your kind. She describes your kind.

HANNITY: She decides that he'll get help from one of his own kind and she referred him to a white lawyer. But she also said on the tape that — admits that she didn't do everything she could for him because he's white.

Now what critics are saying is well that was edited. And what she's claiming is that that was edited, that she left out the part that she had learned from this at the end of the tape which we just heard.

BREITBART: The reason why Shirley Sherrod is the story right now, not the NAACP, is because the White House which stands by the firing or the forced resignation — harassment as she said — they made the story about Shirley. They threw her under the bus.

I have not asked that she get fired. I've not asked for an investigation into her. The whole point was to show that the — for the NAACP to spend five days on national TV saying that the Tea Party is racist without any evidence when we can prove that the central argument didn't happen and the mainstream media won't play it — for them to talk about racism they should not be throwing stones in glass houses.

And what this video shows and what the NAACP affirms in their initial rebuke is not just that Shirley Sherrod, what she said was wrong, but that the audience was laughing and applauding as she described how she maltreated the white farmer.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,597324,00.html