PROJECT VERITAS -- DESTROYERS OF TRUTH
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER

JAMES O’KEEFE CALLS HIMSELF A GUERILLA JOURNALIST, CLAIMS TO BE UNCOVERING “TRUTH,” AND IS A PAID WRITER FOR BREITBART. I JUST LOVE THAT TITLE, “AMERICAN PRAVDA...” DOES PUTIN ET AL PAY HIM TOO, I WONDER? THE TOP ARTICLE FROM NATIONAL REVIEW, A CONSERVATIVE OUTLET, SHOWS THAT EVEN THEY DON’T TRUST OR RESPECT JAMES O’KEEFE.

https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/if-james-okeefe-and-project-veritas-tried-get-paper-print-lie-are-they-really-serving/

O’KEEFE HAS WRITTEN TWO BOOKS:

O'Keefe, James (2013). Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy. New York: Threshold Editions. ISBN 9781476706191. OCLC 893099977.

O'Keefe, James (2018). American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1250154644



https://www.nationalreview.com/blog/corner/if-james-okeefe-and-project-veritas-tried-get-paper-print-lie-are-they-really-serving/
If You’re Trying to Get a Paper to Print a Lie, Are You Really Serving Truth?
By JIM GERAGHTY
November 28, 2017 2:03 PM

From the Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt:

The Unforced Error of Doubling Down on a Bad Decision

When we make a consequential mistake, usually the best thing to do is be upfront about it, admit it, think hard about how we came to make that mistake, and try to make amends.

Often our instincts will tell us to double down.

For some reason, James O’Keefe and his gang at Project Veritas must have been quite convinced that the Washington Post’s reporting about Roy Moore was shoddy and rushed.

The Post reporters spoke to four accusers and two childhood friends of the youngest accuser; both said the accuser described the encounter years earlier (before Moore was running for Senate) and one said the accuser named Moore specifically. The newspaper said it interviewed the youngest accuser six times and her story remained consistent. The Post was able to determine that none of the accusers had donated to his rival, Doug Jones, or his primary rivals. The Post reporters were able to confirm that the youngest accuser’s mother attended a hearing at the Etowah County courthouse in February 1979 through divorce records, and that Moore’s office was down the hall from the courtroom.

To a lot of eyes, the Post article looked as thoroughly reported as possible. Moore denied the allegations, but did not really offer any specific contrary evidence. In fact, he backtracked from his blanket denial, telling Sean Hannity, “I don’t remember going out on dates. I knew her as a friend. If we did go out on dates then we did. But I do not remember that.” Then he offered another blanket denial.

Some Moore supporters argued that Corfman’s credibility is unreliable because of her three divorces and a messy financial history that involves filing for bankruptcy several times. (Needless to say, no fan of Donald Trump should be discounting anyone’s credibility because of life events like that.)

Moore’s wife, Kayla, shared a Facebook post claiming that the restaurant that the latest accuser says was the site of her meeting with Moore did not exist in the late 1970s, that it opened in 2001; thus the accuser’s story cannot be true. That claim is false; the restaurant existed in the late 70s, judging from business records and advertisements in newspapers at the time.

To believe Moore’s version, you have to believe that all four of these women decided to lie when the Washington Post showed up at their door, that they all spontaneously made up a story that they were able to recount in detail in multiple retellings to reporters over a period of weeks, and they all chose to make up similar stories about Moore’s sexual pursuit.

For some reason, the Veritas team believed that if they had a person claiming to be a victim of Moore reach out to the Post, the newspaper would rush the story to print, without investigating the details.

The woman e-mailed and texted the Post reporter, claiming a sordid and false tale of Moore impregnating her, then driving her to another state to have an abortion. The reporter asked if there were any documents to verify these events. The Post started to find discrepancies in the Veritas woman’s account:

Phillips had said she lived in Alabama only for a summer while a teenager; but the cellphone number Phillips provided had an Alabama area code. Reinhard called NFM Lending in Westchester County, but they said a person named Jaime Phillips did not work there.

Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was looking into Phillips’s background, found the document that strongly reinforced the reporters’ suspicions: a Web page for a fundraising campaign by someone with the same name. It was on the website GoFundMe.com under the name Jaime Phillips.

“I’m moving to New York!” the May 29 appeal said. “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”

One of two donations listed on the site was from a name that matched her daughter’s, according to public records.

When the Post reporter asked Phillips about this, she claimed she had been interviewing at the Daily Caller. Nothing about that story checked out, either. When confronted about the discrepancies, Phillips quickly departed.

James O’Keefe should publicly acknowledge that no matter how much he may dislike the Post, they did what they were supposed to do in this situation. They did not rush Phillips’ unverified claims into print. They sought to verify as much of Phillips’ story as they could, and when they could not, they did not print it. Perhaps all of the Washington Post reporters involved in this story loathe Roy Moore. But they have now proven that they’re not willing to print unverified rumors about him.

At any point, did it cross the minds of anyone at Project Veritas that if the Post had run Phillips story, that some people might have concluded Moore had committed the act of securing the abortion, even after O’Keefe appeared and demonstrated that his organization had arranged the whole hoax?

If you truly believe the Post has wronged Roy Moore, there’s a better way to achieve justice: find a discrepancy, contradiction, or impossibility in the accounts of Moore’s accusers.

We all rightfully disdain hoax hate crimes. Just how different is it to make a false claim of statutory rape, hoping to fool a reporter into running a false story? If an effort like this blows up in your face, don’t you have an obligation to come clean and offer a full accounting of who this occurred?

This morning, as of this writing, the Project Veritas web site has nothing about Phillips or her false claims. Instead there’s video of one of O’Keefe’s undercover reporters, talking with Washington Post staff inside the newsroom, with National Security Reporter Dan Lamothe saying of the paper’s editorial page, “They definitely don’t like Trump. I mean here’s the thing though. There’s the news side that’s just trying to critically call bull**** when there’s bull****, but also give him credit where there’s credit, you know? When something is good, and he’s doing more things bad, but he’s doing some of the things good.”

Where’s the news there? Where’s the scandal?

In Roman mythology, Veritas was the goddess of Truth. How well can you serve truth by lying?

And how are you serving Truth when you refuse to even address your mistakes?

RETURN TO THE CORNER
JIM GERAGHTY — Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent of National Review. @jimgeraghty


THE BACKSTORY -- THE SORDID HISTORY OF JAMES O'KEEFE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/womans-effort-to-infiltrate-the-washington-post-dates-back-months/2017/11/29/ce95e01a-d51e-11e7-b62d-d9345ced896d_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_undercover-936pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.7806fc4b27a6
Investigations
Woman’s effort to infiltrate The Washington Post dated back months
By Beth Reinhard, Aaron C. Davis and Andrew Ba Tran November 29, 2017 Email the author

The failed effort by conservative activists to plant a false story about Senate candidate Roy Moore in The Washington Post was part of a months-long campaign to infiltrate The Post and other media outlets in Washington and New York, according to interviews, text messages and social media posts that have since been deleted.

Starting in July, Jaime Phillips, an operative with the organization Project Veritas, which purports to expose media bias, joined two dozen networking groups related to either journalism or left-leaning politics. She signed up to attend 15 related events, often accompanied by a male companion, and appeared at least twice at gatherings for departing Post staffers.

Phillips, 41, presented herself to journalists variously as the owner of a start-up looking to recruit writers, a graduate student studying national security or a contractor new to the area. This summer, she tweeted posts in support of gun control and critical of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants — a departure from the spring when, on accounts that have since been deleted, she used the #MAGA hashtag and mocked the Women’s March on Washington that followed Trump’s inauguration as the “Midol March.”

Her true identity and intentions were revealed only when The Post published a story on Monday, along with photos and video, about how she falsely told Post reporters that Moore had impregnated her when she was a teenager. The Post reported that Phillips appeared to work for Project Veritas, an organization that uses false cover stories and covert video recordings in an attempt to embarrass its targets.

Phillips’s sustained attempt to insinuate herself into the social circles of reporters makes clear that her deception — and the efforts to discredit The Post’s reporting — went much further than the attempt to plant one fabricated article.

Phillips’s encounters with dozens of journalists, which have not been previously reported, typically occurred at professional networking events or congratulatory send-offs for colleagues at bars and restaurants. She used three names and three phone numbers to follow up with Post employees, chatting about life in Washington and asking to be introduced to other journalists.

In one case, Phillips kept a conversation going for five weeks with a Post employee over text message, repeatedly asking whether she and her husband could meet Phillips for dinner. After the employee shared that she was experiencing a family tragedy, Phillips wrote: “Let me know if I can do anything to help, even if just to talk or something small. We’d like to send flowers or a donation… Thoughts & prayers.”

Phillips did not respond to messages seeking comment Wednesday.

Texts show Project Veritas operative seeking to build rapport with Post employee
View Photos Jaime Phillips identified herself as a visitor to D.C. and communicated with a Washington Post employee from late August until early October, repeatedly asking to take the employee out to dinner. The Post is not identifying the employee because the exchange includes references to a family tragedy. Some of the details of that event have been redacted.
[Read the text messages]

Asked to comment on Phillips’s mingling with employees of The Post and other news organizations over the past few months, Project Veritas co-founder James O’Keefe said, “I can’t give up the identity of my sources, no more than you can disclose the identity of your anonymous sources.”

Post reporters watched as Phillips walked into Project Veritas’s office in Mamaroneck, N.Y., Monday morning, five days after presenting her with documents that raised doubts about her motivations in making claims against Moore.

Project Veritas and O’Keefe have declined to say whether she is an employee. But after The Post published its story on Monday, O’Keefe appeared to indirectly confirm the connection in a fundraising appeal, saying an operative “embedded” with The Post had “had their cover blown.”

Also since the publication of the story, journalists in New York and Washington said they recognized Phillips as someone who had attended at least seven social gatherings in recent months.

Jaime Phillips, center, gave her name as Jaime Taylor while attending a meetup for entrepreneurial journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism in August 2017. (Obtained by The Washington Post)

Before going undercover, Phillips worked in the loan industry in Georgia and Maryland, according to a database run by the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System. Maryland-based NFM Lending confirmed that she was employed there until the summer of 2016.

She was an outspoken conservative, donating $400 to Trump’s campaign last year, records show, and appearing in a picture on Twitter the day after the election smiling and standing next to a man with a Trump campaign sign. On a now-deleted Periscope account, she posted video of herself mocking the women’s protest following Trump’s inauguration.

She tweeted under the handle @JaimeTennille, promoting a variety of right-leaning posts, and for a time her name displayed as Jaime❤PresidentTrump. Her profile included hashtags #MAGA!!! and #DrainTheSwamp.

In April, she tweeted the hashtag #VeryFakeNews with a link about CNN, and she retweeted a post from O’Keefe. She later changed her Twitter handle to @Covfefe2Scoops and her username to “J’aime Covfefe” after Trump in May tweeted the typo.

She said in a posting on GoFundMe.com in May that she had been laid off from her job in the mortgage business and was moving to New York to take down the “liberal MSM.” Project Veritas had posted on its Facebook page two months earlier that it was seeking to hire 12 “undercover journalists.”

Soon, Phillips began building a new online persona. She changed the cover art on her Facebook profile to a picture of John F. Kennedy. She created a new Twitter account featuring the slogan “Love not hate makes America great.” She started a new Periscope account using hashtags showing support for liberal protests. In a Facebook post on July 16, she wrote that she was leaving Atlanta to move to the Washington area to work for a “peace building” organization.

Her original social media accounts were eventually erased — and the accounts with the left-leaning sentiments were deleted after The Post published its story Monday.

The Post recovered the postings via the Internet Archive and Google’s cache. Other images of her social media accounts were captured as they were being deleted Tuesday night.
For two weeks in July, early in her time in the District, Phillips rented a basement apartment in the Capitol Hill home of Brad Woodhouse, the former communications director for the Democratic National Committee. Woodhouse was president of the liberal group Americans United for Change when it was targeted in a Project Veritas video released days before the 2016 election.

He said in an interview that he recognized his former tenant while reading The Post’s story Monday. He also provided The Post with a record of Phillips’s Airbnb booking, which included her name and her photo.

“I was stunned,” Woodhouse said Tuesday night. “It took a little while to sink in and then it was like, ‘Really? Are you kidding me?’ ”

One of the first media gatherings attended by Phillips appears to be a July 20 gathering of the D.C. chapter of the Online News Association at Union Drinkery, an event that was hosted by Tauhid Chappell, a social media producer at The Post.

Phillips introduced herself as “Jaime Taylor,” Chappell said, and told him that she and her brother were hoping to launch a news website that would elevate “true news” above less substantive stories.

They exchanged numbers. Five days later, Phillips texted Chappell and asked whether he knew any similar networking groups in New York. “I can use all the help & advice I can get!” she texted.

He didn’t hear from her again until Aug. 24, when she said she was back in Washington and meeting a friend at Maddy’s Taproom, around the corner from The Post’s K Street office.

“Apparently there’s a WaPo thing going on here tonight, made me think of you,” Phillips wrote.

Chappell did not respond. That night, dozens of Post employees were at the bar and restaurant for simultaneous going-away parties for Emily Chow, a design editor, and Michael Cotterman, an administrative services manager.

Melissa McCullough, who as director of newsroom operations oversees administrative services including newsroom work spaces, equipment and supplies, was a host of the party. She said Wednesday that a woman approached her, mentioned that everyone seemed to be having fun and asked where the group worked. Phillips introduced herself as simply “Jaime,” a contractor visiting the area, McCullough said.

Phillips identified a man with her as her new boyfriend who was taking a job in New York, McCullough said. The couple lingered for hours, staying after most others had cleared out and even as McCullough bought dinner for one of the departing staffers and paid the tab.

Over the night, McCullough recalled, the two made small talk, asking about where to go in Washington, which sports bar would be showing a pay-per-view boxing match that weekend, and about restaurant recommendations.

McCullough said: “Every now and then, she would interject with politics and everything going on, and questions like, ‘What’s it like at The Post?’ ”

Phillips, another Post staffer recalled, sometimes stood tightly against the man she was with, a bag over her shoulder, pinned between them.

In one of those moments, the man asked McCullough about Trump, McCullough said.

“Let’s just hope he doesn’t get reelected in another 3 years . . . just my take,” McCullough said, according to a video of the encounter secretly recorded and released Wednesday by Project Veritas.

On Sept. 24, reporters for the New York Times, McClatchy News, Bloomberg BNA, the Center for Public Integrity, among other media outlets, spoke with Phillips at a gathering of investigative reporters at a Washington bar, according to five journalists who attended.

Emily Goodell, who was beginning a six-month reporting internship at the Student Press Law Center, ended up spending more than four hours with Phillips, she said.

“I decided to go to networking events, looking to meet people and make connections . . . That’s how I ended up at an Investigative Reporters and Editors happy hour meetup on Sept. 14. That’s how I came to meet Jaime Phillips, although she introduced herself to me under a false name: Jaime Taylor,” Goodell wrote in a blog post about the encounter published Wednesday evening on the law center’s website.

In an interview Tuesday, Goodell, 21, said Phillips had a list of journalists she wanted to meet, and Goodell helped her find them.

“She was always asking questions,” Goodell wrote. “She asked me about being a reporter, about politics, about what I thought about the news. I didn’t think anything of her line of questioning. The bar was filled with reporters from The Washington Post, Atlantic Media, CNN, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations.”

Among the journalists present at a dinner afterward were Goodell, McClatchy data reporter Ben Wieder and reporters from Bloomberg BNA and the Center for Public Integrity, Wieder and Goodell said. The group had a late-night dinner of boozy milkshakes and burgers at Ted’s Bulletin on 14th Street NW.

Wieder said he attends such events regularly. “I go to be able to meet other people in the industry whose bylines I’ve read, which has helped me get jobs and develop my skills,” he said. “I worry that this sort of thing will create a little bit of a chilling effect, that people might be worried and more cautious if they are at a happy hour.”

Goodell has also been thinking about how it could have turned out worse.

“I didn’t think about our interaction again until I read The Post article Tuesday morning. I’ve been racking my brain since. Nothing came out of my interaction with her, but now my mind is inundated with all the things that could have happened.”

On. Sept. 18, Phillips appeared at a going-away party for Jia Lynn Yang, a national security editor who was leaving for the New York Times, at the restaurant Pennsylvania 6, near The Post. Post reporter Dan Lamothe said Phillips introduced herself as a Johns Hopkins graduate student. She asked about covering the Pentagon and his opinion of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Lamothe said.

Phillips sent Lamothe an email the following day.

“I checked out your Twitter & some of your articles you've written and I have to say I really appreciate reading your perspective on defense issues, especially Mattis in particular,” wrote Phillips, who gave her name as Jaime Gibson.

She suggested he could help her focus her research and asked whether they could meet for drinks or lunch. Lamothe did not respond.

Lamothe said he had not realized he was being secretly filmed until snippets of the barroom conversation surfaced in a video posted Monday by Project Veritas. In the video, Phillips is not seen but she is identified as “PV JOURNALIST #1.”

“Democracy dies in darkness, right?” she says at one point, referring to The Post’s slogan. A man accompanying Phillips, identified in the video as “PV JOURNALIST #2,” asked Lamothe questions about The Post’s opinion writers.

On the video, Lamothe expressed dismay at some of The Post’s opinion writing.

On Wednesday, Lamothe said: “I regret being so open with strangers, and that’s the big lesson I’ve learned here. I’m generally an open, friendly person, but I need to be more cautious.”

Project Veritas also posted video from another farewell gathering that week for Post reporter Thomas Gibbons-Neff on Sept. 21 at Post Pub, a nearby bar. [Washington Post] National security reporter Adam Entous said he did not know that he was being videotaped when he was approached by two men who described themselves as aspiring documentary filmmakers interested in doing a project on The Post.

On a video released by Project Veritas, Entous said it has not been proved that Trump colluded with Russia.

Another Post reporter, Matt Zapotosky, said the men introduced themselves as Karl Bradley and Michael Condon. The man identified as Bradley followed up with an email to Zapotosky a few days later. “Wondering if you might have time this week to grab a drink; would love to pick your brain some more for this project I was telling you about,” he wrote.

Zapotosky referred him to The Post’s public relations department.

Bradley pitched a proposed biopic on the former Post reporter Murrey Marder, known for his hard-hitting coverage of Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade. “It’s being described as “All the President’s Men” meets “Good Night and Good Luck,” he wrote to the public relations team. Marder died in 2013.

The public relations team declined to participate.

Jack Gillum and Alice Crites contributed to this story.


WASHINGTON POST WAS THE VICTIM

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/11/30/james-okeefe-head-of-project-veritas-vows-further-undercover-operations-being-hated-is-a-sign-of-respect/
Post Nation
James O’Keefe, head of Project Veritas, vows further undercover operations: ‘Being hated is a sign of respect’
By Joel Achenbach November 30, 2017 Email the author

Photograph -- James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, takes questions from the audience at Southern Methodist University on Wednesday night. (Laura Buckman for The Washington Post)

DALLAS — James O’Keefe, the self-described “guerrilla journalist” who runs Project Veritas, spoke to students at Southern Methodist University here on Wednesday night, highlighting his organization’s undercover efforts to expose what it says is liberal bias in the media and defending the deceptive tactics that are its trademark.

O’Keefe spoke just days after it was revealed that one of his organization’s undercover operatives was attempting to plant a fake story with The Washington Post, and he made mention of the sting operation just briefly, portraying himself as a David battling the Goliath of the mainstream media and vowing to push ahead with his efforts. In that case, a woman named Jaime Phillips claimed to have had a sexual relationship with U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore when she was a teenager and tried to lure reporters into covering the false story; The Post instead revealed the ploy.

“The Washington Post seems to want a Nobel Prize for vetting a source correctly,” he said.

[ Woman’s effort to infiltrate The Washington Post dated back months ]

O’Keefe was invited by a campus organization, SMU Young Americans For Freedom, and about 100 people attended the speech in a student center theater as video and TV cameras lined the rear of the hall. There were no protests or disruptions.

“It’s been quite a week and I have a lot to say. So this should be very fun,” O’Keefe said. “We live in unbelievable times and investigative reporting doesn’t really happen very often anymore. Yes, we use disguise, yes, we go undercover, but sometimes it’s the only way to ferret out what people really believe — when nobody’s looking.”

He also acknowledged that his tactics are controversial and sometimes draw scorn: “I think in many ways being hated is a sign of respect,” he said.

O’Keefe gave the greatest hits of his undercover career, starting when, as a student at Rutgers, he pretended to be offended by the green-clad Irish-looking figure depicted on Lucky Charms cereal boxes. He showed a video of his visit to a university official in which he complained about the depiction, which he claimed was offensive to Irish Americans, and said Rutgers agreed to ban Lucky Charms from the dining hall.

He showed his much-discussed sting operation against an ACORN office in Baltimore, during which he pretended to be a pimp, accompanied by a prostitute, looking for government assistance in opening a house of prostitution. That preceded federal defunding of ACORN.

Other stings targeted Planned Parenthood, NPR, an educational publishing house and the leaders of a teacher’s union in Yonkers, N.Y. Acknowledging that Project Veritas has been criticized for selective editing of its undercover videos, O’Keefe said: “We stand by our reporting, and we stand by every edit we have ever made at Project Veritas.”

James O’Keefe speaks about the organization’s work at Southern Methodist University in Dallas on Wednesday. (Laura Buckman for The Washington Post)

He lamented that Project Veritas is not widely viewed as a legitimate journalistic enterprise. Describing an attempt by New Hampshire prosecutors to obtain his raw unpublished footage, he said, “Would you ask ‘60 Minutes’ to cooperate with the U.S. government, to hand over hard drives?”

“At Veritas, we believe that we’re all journalists now,” he said. “The establishment desperately needs to narrow the definition of who is a journalist, in order to protect their power.”

Project Veritas in recent months targeted The Post and other news organizations in Washington and New York. It apparently attempted to plant a false story about Moore, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in an Alabama special election. Phillips contacted The Post claiming that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and then paid for an abortion. The woman’s story did not stand up to further reporting and fact-checking, and The Post discovered that she had connections to Project Veritas.

RELATED: A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore

O’Keefe’s organization has since posted surreptitious videos of Post reporters and other staff members discussing President Trump, the Russia investigation and news operations.

On Wednesday, Project Veritas posted a video message from O’Keefe on social media: “The entire media establishment is against Project Veritas for good reason. We’re challenging their credibility, their veracity and their monopoly. We are an existential threat to them . . . Project Veritas has a stone lodged between Goliath’s eyes. The media wants me to kneel down and apologize. I will not.”

After the Post exposed the false story, the SMU student group posted a statement on its Facebook page saying it had invited O’Keefe to campus “because his experience in investigative journalism and holding organizations and media outlets accountable makes him noteworthy” and invited attendees of the speech to ask O’Keefe “challenging questions during the Q&A session.”

Only a few of the questions were challenging, though. O’Keefe twice declined to address whether the failed sting operation at The Post made The Post’s earlier reporting on Moore, involving alleged sexual predation of teenagers, more credible.

He made clear that Project Veritas is continuing to push forward.

“We have many, many, many people across the country as I speak having meetings undercover at varying levels of access,” O’Keefe said. “They’ll have to deal with me for many years.”

Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National desk.


O’KEEFE IS ONE OF THE ENEMIES OF JUSTICE, IN MY VIEWS. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT CARING AND HAVING A CONSCIENCE ARE FOR SISSIES.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe
James O'Keefe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American conservative political activist.[2][3] He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters with figures and workers in academic, governmental and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or allegedly illegal behavior by employees and/or representatives of those organizations.[4] He has been criticized for selectively editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations and the subjects' responses, creating the false impression that people said or did things they did not.[5][6][7][8]

He gained national attention for his video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011.

When his videos portraying ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning hit the 24-hour cable news cycle, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices.[9] Shortly after, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately.[10][11] One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement.

O'Keefe gained support from conservative media and interest groups. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment.com. In June 2010, O'Keefe formed a 501(c)(3) organization, Project Veritas, with the stated mission to "investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct."[12]

Early life and education

James Edward O'Keefe III was born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the elder of two children of James, a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. He has a younger sister.[13][14][15]

O'Keefe grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so", according to his father.[14] He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He attained Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America.[16] O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy.[1] Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from The Leadership Institute.[14]

For his first video, he and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms.[17] They expected to be thrown out of school,[18] but the Rutgers official was courteous, took notes, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu.[14]

Career
After graduating from Rutgers, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe calls his mentor.[1] The institute sent him to colleges to train students to start conservative independent newspapers, but, after a year LI officials asked him to leave. According to LI president and founder Morton Blackwell, O'Keefe was "very effective and very enthusiastic" but after a year he was asked to leave because officials felt his activist work threatened the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation. Forced to choose between activism and his nonprofit work, O'Keefe chose activism.[1][13]

O'Keefe has produced and distributed secretly recorded—and at times reputedly misleadingly edited—videos and audio files made during staged encounters with targeted entities or individuals.[8][19] His work takes the form of undercover stings targeted at liberal groups and politicians.[20] He sought to "embarrass" and "damage" his targets, such as Senator Landrieu and ACORN.[21][22][23][24][25]

He has sought to maximize publicity by releasing secretly recorded videos over several days or months, often in relation to funding authorizations or significant political actions related to the subject organization.[26][27] Many videos received widespread media coverage sparking significant reactions, most notably videos of ACORN which resulted in the Congress quickly freezing funds, two executive agencies canceling contracts, and several ACORN workers being fired, and videos of National Public Radio (NPR) executives which led to the resignation of CEO Vivian Schiller,[28][29][30] shortly before Congressional funding hearings involving NPR.[28]

In January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Breitbart's website, BigGovernment.com. Breitbart stated in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights" to gain release of O'Keefe's videos first on his website.[31] In 2010 O'Keefe formed his own organization, Project Veritas, whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society."[32]

Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from anonymous donations through Donors Trust, a conservative, American nonprofit donor-advised fund, which according to its promotional materials, says that it will "keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues."[33] Prominent donors include the Trump Foundation, which, in May 2015, donated $10,000.[34][35]

O'Keefe is a conservative activist with mainstream conservative pro-market and anti-government views,[13][36][37] although he has described himself as a "progressive radical", because he wants to change things, "not conserve them".[13] He considers himself a muckraker.[38] O'Keefe has expressed admiration for the philosophy of G.K. Chesterton and for a free press.[13][39][40]

Major works

Planned Parenthood recordings (2008)

In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, founder of an anti-abortion group on the UCLA campus.[41] They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics. Rose posed as a pregnant teenager seeking advice (a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male); they made two videos and released them on YouTube. In one, a clinic worker in Los Angeles tells Rose "that she could 'figure out a birth date that works' to avoid having PPLA notify police."[42]

In 2007, O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women. When told they could be, he made "race-motivated" comments.[43] By audio recordings, workers at clinics in six other states agreed to accept his donation under similar terms.[44]

Planned Parenthood of California filed a "cease and desist" order against Lila Rose, charging that she was violating state laws against secret recordings. The order required her to remove the videos from YouTube and give all the recordings to the organization. She complied through her attorney.[42]

After O'Keefe's four audio recordings were publicized in 2008, Planned Parenthood of Ohio issued a public response, saying the worker's words were "a violation of any policy, and it's very upsetting." The CEO said, "Planned Parenthood has a long history of social justice."[43] Other offices noted the wide variety of services the organization offers to low income communities.[44] African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization.[41]

ACORN videos (2009)
Main article: ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy
In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for 40 years for persons of low and moderate income.[21]

A Washington Post correspondent[who?] reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives", and "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." ACORN mostly registered people from the Latino and African American communities.[36]

The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009[45] and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution.[13] He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera).[46] Furthermore, the ACORN employees involved reported his activities to the police after he left.[47] O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, as well as distorted the chronologies. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work.[6][7]

On April 10, 2012, the political gossip site Wonkette reported that Andrew Breitbart had signed a $120,000 contract for "life rights" by O'Keefe and Giles based on the ACORN videos. The contract was paid in monthly increments of $5,000. Giles ultimately received $32,000 before parting ways with Breitbart over what she described in legal depositions as "a conflict of visions". O'Keefe ultimately received $65,000.[48]

Reception and lawsuit

After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN.[49] The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN.[50] By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published which cleared the organization of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees.[51][52][53][54] In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources.[55]

On March 1, 2010, the district attorney for Brooklyn at that time[who?] found there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York.[56][57] In late March 2010, Clark Hoyt, then public editor for The New York Times, reviewed the videos, full transcripts and full audio. Hoyt wrote "The videos were heavily edited. The sequence of some conversations was changed. Some workers seemed concerned for Giles, one advising her to get legal help. In two cities, ACORN workers called the police. But the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context."[58]

The California Attorney General's Office granted O'Keefe and Giles limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes related to ACORN offices in California.[21] The AG's Report was released on April 1, 2010, concluding that the videos from ACORN offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino had been "severely edited."[21] The report found there was no evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees nor any evidence that any employee intended to aid or abet criminal conduct. It found that three employees had tried to deflect the couple's plans, told them ACORN could not offer them help on the grounds they wanted, and otherwise dealt with them appropriately. Such context was not reflected in O'Keefe's edited tapes. The AG's Report noted that "O'Keefe stated that he was out to make a point and to damage ACORN and therefore did not act as a journalist objectively reporting a story". It found no evidence of intent by the employees to aid the couple. The report also noted "a serious and glaring deficit in management, governance and accountability within the ACORN organization" and said its conduct "suggests an organizational ethos at odds with the norms of American society. Empowering and serving low-and moderate-income families cannot be squared with counseling and encouraging illegal activities."[21]

The AG's report confirmed that ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, shown in O'Keefe's video as apparently aiding a human smuggling proposal, had immediately reported his encounter with the couple to an American police detective at the time to thwart their plan. Following the AG's report, that employee, who had been fired by ACORN after the video's release, sued O'Keefe and Giles in 2010. He alleged invasion of privacy and cited a California law that prohibits recordings without consent of all parties involved.[59]

On the basis of the edited videotape which O'Keefe released, Vera appeared to be a willing participant in helping with O'Keefe's plan to smuggle young women into the United States illegally. However, authorities confirmed that Mr. Vera immediately contacted them about O'Keefe and that he had also encouraged O'Keefe to share as much information as possible about his scheme and gather further evidence of O'Keefe's purported illegal activities, which could then be used by prosecutors to bring charges against O'Keefe for attempted human trafficking. Due to O'Keefe's release of the dubiously edited video, intentionally designed to "prove" that ACORN employees were ready and willing to engage in illicit activities, Mr. Vera lost his job and was falsely accused of being engaged in human trafficking. O'Keefe noted that he "regrets any pain" caused by his reckless actions, though O'Keefe's lawyer dismissed any claimed injury incurred by Vera and stated that the payment was a "nuisance settlement".[60]

O'Keefe moved for summary judgment in his favor, arguing that the plaintiff had no reasonable expectation that the conversation would be private. In August 2012, the federal judge hearing the case denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment. The judge ruled that O'Keefe had "misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential."[61] On March 5, 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to former California ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera for deliberately misrepresenting Mr. Vera's actions, and acknowledged in the settlement that at the time he published his video he was unaware that Vera had notified the police about the incident. The settlement contained the following apology: "O'Keefe regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family."[62][63]

On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report finding no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years.[10][11]

Senator Mary Landrieu (2010)

O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in New Orleans in January 2010 and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana.[64][65] The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system.[66] O'Keefe stated that he had entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill.[67]

The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses.[68][69] O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The other three men received lesser sentences.[70]

In August 2013, O'Keefe revisited the incident by releasing a video entitled: "a confrontation with former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten on the campus of Tulane University". Letten is a former Republican U.S. Attorney who recused himself from the Landrieu incident because he knew the father of one of the men involved. The video shows Letten accusing O'Keefe of "terrorizing" Letten's wife at their home, of harassing him, and trespassing on the Tulane campus. He called O'Keefe a "coward" and a "spud", and referred to O'Keefe and his companions as "hobbits" and "scum".[71]

NPR video (2011)

On March 8, 2011, shortly before the US Congress was to vote on funding for National Public Radio (NPR), O'Keefe released a video of a discussion with Ronald Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, and associate Betsy Liley. Raw content was secretly recorded by O'Keefe's partners Ken Larrey[72] and Shaughn Adeleye.[73]

In the videos published by O'Keefe, the NPR executives were shown meeting with representatives of a self-described Muslim charity called the "Muslim Education Action Center" that wished to donate money to NPR.[74] At the meeting, the representatives claimed their charity was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. NPR responded by stating that Schiller's remarks were presented out of sequence and that he said that he would speak personally, and not for NPR. Schiller said some highly placed Republicans believed the Republican Party had been hijacked by a radical group (the Tea Party) that they characterized as "Islamophobic" and "seriously racist, racist people", and while Schiller did not disagree, according to NPR, O'Keefe's editing made it appear those were Schiller's opinions. Schiller then says that unlike establishment Republicans, the growing Tea Party movement in the party "is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move. [sic]"[75][76]

Later in the edited video, Schiller seems to say he believes NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding", explaining that removal of federal funding would allow NPR more independence and remove the widely held misconception that NPR is significantly funded by the public. But on the raw tape, Schiller also said that withdrawing federal funding would cause local stations to go under and that NPR is doing "everything we can" to keep it.[77]

In a statement released before analysis of the longer raw video, NPR said, "Schiller's comments are in direct conflict with NPR's official position ... The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept."[78] After reviewing the unedited video, Scott Baker, editor-in-chief of TheBlaze, said the NPR executives "seem to be fairly balanced people."[75]

Journalists Ben Smith, James Poniewozik, and Dave Weigel have expressed regret for giving O'Keefe's NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves.[6]

Reception

Comparison of the raw video with the released one revealed editing that was characterized as "selective" and "deceptive" by Michael Gerson, opinion writer in The Washington Post, who wrote, "O'Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie."[79] Time magazine wrote that the video "transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting", was "manipulative" and "a partisan hit-job."[80]

The raw video shows Schiller told the two men "that donors cannot expect to influence news coverage." On the longer tape, he says, "There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form."[6] The broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, who now teaches at the Poynter Institute, noted that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom. He commented on the raw tape: "The message that he said most often—I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage", Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again.[6]

On March 17, Martha T. Moore of USA Today reported: "According to The Blaze analysis, Ron Schiller's most inflammatory remarks, that Tea Party members are 'seriously racist', were made as he was recounting the views of Republicans he has spoken with—although he does not appear to disagree. It also shows Schiller appearing to laugh about the potential spread of Islamic sharia law, when the longer version shows he laughed in reaction to something completely different."[77]

Two days later, O'Keefe released a video in which Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving at NPR, appeared to have checked with senior management and said MEAC was cleared to make donations anonymously and NPR could help shield donations from government audits, but added that, in order to proceed, additional background information would be required, including an IRS Form 990.[81] Liley advised the caller that NPR executives would investigate them before accepting any large donation, examining tax records and checking out other organizations that have received donations from them.[81] Liley raises the possibility of NPR's turning down substantial gifts and stresses the "firewall" between the revenue-generating part of NPR and its news operation.[81] NPR put Liley on administrative leave. In emails released following the publication of the Liley video, NPR confirmed that the official had consulted appropriately with top management and notified the purported donors of problems with their desired method of donation.[82]

Ronald Schiller, who had already submitted his resignation back in January so that he could join the Aspen Institute, moved up his resignation after the video release when NPR put him on administrative leave. CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ronald Schiller) announced she was resigning, effective immediately.[83][84][85][86][87][88]

U.S. Presidential elections (2016)
A month before the launch of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to O'Keefe's Project Veritas. O'Keefe attended, as a guest of the Trump campaign, the final presidential debate, and was later available in the spin room following the Las Vegas event.[34][35][89][90][91]

In response to reports alleging a connection between the videos and the Trump campaign, a spokesperson for Project Veritas stated, "We have a multi-million dollar budget and the cost of this video series alone is way up there. The donation Trump provided didn't impact our actions one way or the other."[92]

Americans United for Change videos

On October 18, 2016, O'Keefe released a series of videos on Project Veritas' YouTube channel titled "Rigging the Election" that apparently showed former national field director Scott Foval of Americans United for Change discussing planting agitators, including "mentally ill people that we pay to do shit” in front of Donald Trump rallies to ask questions near reporters, a common practice known as "bird dogging".[93][94] Foval also said "We've been bussing people in to deal with you fuckin' assholes for fifty years and we're not going to stop now." Foval later said he was talking about busing people to rallies.[95] Foval went on to discuss the legal consequences of voter fraud: "Let's just say, in theory, if a major investigation came up of major vote fraud that way, how would they prove it?... If there's a bus involved, that changes the dynamic... You can prove conspiracy if there's a bus, but if there are cars, it is much harder to prove."[96] The accuracy of the videos has been questioned for possibly omitting context, and the unedited raw footage has not been made available.[19][93][97][98]

DNC Chair Donna Brazile said the video footage omitted necessary context.[citation needed] Scott Foval was fired by Americans United for Change after the first video was released.[99] Foval later said he had been set up.[19][93][97][98] Robert Creamer a DNC consultant and husband of U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, said, "We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer working with us," he said. "While none of the schemes described in the conversations ever took place, these conversations do not at all reflect the values of Democracy Partners."[99] Shortly afterwards, Creamer, who was also featured in the video, said he would end his consulting arrangement with the DNC to avoid becoming a "distraction".[97]

Following the publication of his videos, O'Keefe filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, alleging "a criminal conspiracy" involving the Clinton campaign, the DNC and three left-leaning super PACs.[100] On June 1, 2017, Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners, filed a $1 million lawsuit against Project Veritas, claiming Project Veritas had lied to gain access to the firm and violating anti-wiretapping laws.[101]

In response to a third video, in which O'Keefe stated that Clinton was behind an illegal public relations gimmick to punish Trump for not releasing his tax returns, the Clinton campaign denied any wrongdoing. Independent campaign finance experts posited the video doesn't support O'Keefe's claims. Clinton said she was aware of the activists dressed as Donald Duck, who were following Donald Trump while asking about his tax returns, and said she was amused.[102]

On October 26, 2016, O'Keefe posted a fourth video on his Project Veritas Action YouTube channel. The video alleged that liberal groups supporting Hillary Clinton were illegally taking foreign money. The targeted group, Americans United for Change foundation, is a 501(c)4 organization and is allowed to legally accept foreign contributions. However, AUC returned the money shortly after the video was released. The group's chief stated, "We returned the money because the last thing we want to be associated with is a character like O'Keefe who has been convicted and successfully sued for his illegal tactics and fraudulent activities."[103]

On November 8, 2016 (Election Day), O'Keefe spent some time going around vans that were allegedly "bussing people around to polls in Philadelphia".[104]

On January 9, 2017, Project Veritas operative Allison Maass was filmed attempting to bribe members of Americans Take Action into inciting a riot at Trump's inauguration.[105][106] On January 16, 2017, Project Veritas uploaded a video showing DC Antifascist Coalition members of Disrupt J20 plotting to use "stink bombs" at the DeploraBall. After the video's release, Disrupt J20 denied the statements, saying that the members deliberately gave false information to Veritas.[107] The video led to the arrest of one man allegedly involved in the plan,[108] as well as two associates. All three individuals pleaded guilty.[109]

New York City elections official video

In October 2016, Project Veritas released a video taken at a United Federation of Teachers holiday party on December 16, 2015. It was secretly recorded by an undercover journalist posing as a political consultant. In the video, the Democratic representative from Manhattan on the New York City Board of Elections, Commissioner Alan Schulkin, was seen saying that there was "all kinds of fraud" in the election system.

Schulkin criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio's municipal ID program as a major contributing factor. "He gave out ID cards, de Blasio. That's in lieu of a driver's license, but you can use it for anything. But they didn't vet people to see who they really are. Anybody can go in there and say, 'I am Joe Smith, I want an ID card.' It's absurd. There is a lot of fraud. Not just voter fraud, all kinds of fraud ... This is why I get more conservative as I get older", Schulkin said in the tape.[110]

Not realizing he was being recorded, Schulkin said, "The law says you can't ask for anything. Which they really should be able to do. I think there is a lot of voter fraud." He continued, "Certain neighborhoods in particular, they bus people around to vote. They put them in a bus and go poll site to poll site." At another point in the conversation, Schulkin said, "Oh, there's thousands of absentee ballots. ... I don't know where they came from."[111][better source needed]

Shortly after the release of the video, Mayor de Blasio called Schulkin's behavior "entirely inappropriate" and demanded his resignation.[112][better source needed]

At a subsequent BOE meeting in October, Schulkin said his remarks had been taken out of context and denied being a racist, but defended his support for a voter ID law. He was told by party leaders at the meeting that he would not be reappointed to another four-year term after his term expired on December 31.[113][better source needed]

Other incidents
Abbie Boudreau (2010)

In August 2010, O'Keefe planned a staged encounter with the CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who was doing a documentary on the young conservative movement. He set up an appointment at his office in Maryland to discuss a video shoot.[114] Izzy Santa, executive director of Project Veritas, warned Boudreau that O'Keefe was planning to "punk" her on the boat by trying to seduce her—which he would film on hidden cameras.[114][115] Boudreau did not board the boat and soon left the area.[114][115]

CNN later published a 13-page plan written by O'Keefe mentor Ben Wetmore.[116] It listed props for the boat scheme, including pornography, sexual aids, condoms, a blindfold and "fuzzy" handcuffs.[114][115][117] When questioned by CNN, O'Keefe denied he was going to follow the Wetmore plan, as he found parts of it inappropriate.[115] Boudreau commented "that does not appear to be true, according to a series of emails we obtained from Izzy Santa, who says the e-mails reveal James' true intentions."[118]

Following the Boudreau incident, Project Veritas paid Izzy Santa a five-figure settlement after she threatened to sue, which included a nondisclosure agreement.[119] Funding decreased from conservative political organizations following this CNN incident.[119]

New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010)

Starting October 25, 2010, O'Keefe posted a series of videos on the Internet entitled Teachers Unions Gone Wild. At the time, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was in negotiations with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, over teacher pay benefits and tenure.[120] O'Keefe obtained one video from recordings made by “citizen journalists”, whom he recruited to attend the NJEA’s leadership conference. They secretly recorded meetings and conversations with teacher participants.[120] It featured teachers discussing the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher.

A second video featured a staged phone conversation by O'Keefe with Lawrence E. Everett, assistant superintendent of the Passaic, New Jersey city schools, in which Everett refused to commit to firing a teacher based upon the purported claim by a parent that the teacher had used the "n-word" with his child.[120][121] The third video (October 26, 2010) featured audio of a voice, identified as NJEA Associate Director Wayne Dibofsky, who alleged voter fraud during the 1997 Jersey City mayoral election.[120] The voice of Robert Byrne, Jersey City municipal clerk, was recorded on the same video; he noted that the election was monitored by lawyers for both candidates.[120]

New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie stated at the time that nothing on the videos surprised him.[122] NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said the union and its attorneys were discussing their options regarding possible legal action, although no action was ever taken. Wollmer called the videos "a calculated attack on this organization and its members", and described O'Keefe as "flat-out sleazy".[122]

Medicaid videos (2011)

In the summer of 2011, O'Keefe released videos of his colleagues' staged encounters purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in six states, including Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Following his previous strategy, he sent the releases to conservative outlets over a period of weeks. In July 2011, two conservative groups released a secretly recorded video of an encounter in Maine's Department of Health and Human Services.

In the video, an actor attempted to apply for benefits while hinting that he was a drug smuggler. Americans for Prosperity and O'Keefe said he had similar recorded videos from offices in Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, and believed that there was a systemic problem. In Maine, Governor LePage concluded upon further examination of the videos that there was no fraud or intent to commit fraud.[123][124][125]

A similar O'Keefe video posted on the Project Veritas web site purported to show workers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services assisting actors posing as drug dealers in applying for benefits. His fourth Medicaid video, apparently filmed in Richmond, Virginia, was released in July 2011.[126] "[As 'Sean Murphy'], dressed in the same regalia he wore on the New Jersey shoot, [O'Keefe] presented himself to a Medicaid worker in Charleston, S.C., as an Irish drug importer and Irish Republican Army member who wanted coverage for 25 wounded comrades who entered the U.S. illegally. The kindly worker spent time photocopying applications and dealing with this improbable applicant. She explained to him that only U.S. citizens are eligible for Medicaid and informed him she was not making any promises that the 25 purported IRA members would qualify. She said he had to abide by the law and told him that she didn't want to know details, because federal law protects patient privacy. "Like I said, someone would have to come here and subpoena our information in order for us to divulge any information, because like I said there's something called the Health Insurance Accountability and Affordability Act—or portability—and anyway it went into effect several years ago, and that's what we follow. It is federal law, and they do threaten high fines—which they don't pay me as much per year as they threaten to fine me—so it is definitely not in my own best interest to divulge anything to anyone because I cannot afford it, I do not want to go to jail."[124][127]

Reception

The videos received less media attention than earlier O'Keefe efforts. Generally, the state officials and representatives acknowledged potential problems but also took a measured tone in response, to allow time to fully investigate and evaluate the incidents. After viewing the video, Maine governor Paul LePage thanked the individual who took the video and noted: "The video in its entirety does not show a person willfully helping someone de-fraud the welfare system. It does show a need for further job knowledge and continuous and improved staff training." He also stated that "we would be six months further along in fixing the problem" if he had received the video when it was filmed. LePage directed his agency director to work on correcting the problem.[125]

Ohio media initially reported that "a Franklin County Jobs and Family Service worker was placed on administrative leave and at least one other person was out of work" as a result of the video's release.[128] Ben Johnson of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services noted that benefits were never granted in the case, and that the made-up story would have been caught if the application process had proceeded. He said his office would use the video to strengthen staff training. Mike DeWine, Attorney General of Ohio, described the Ohio video as "outrageous" and intended to instruct his state's Medicaid fraud unit to look into the incident.[128][129] The director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Michael Colbert, notified county leaders of a mandatory retraining, "to ensure they can identify people trying to defraud the government".[130] Upon investigation by state officials, the Medicaid worker who coached O'Keefe's operative seeking Medicaid for his father and claimed to own a yacht as well as a helipad, on how to hide their (also claimed) ownership of an $800,000 automobile had been placed on paid administrative leave.[124][131] A spokesman for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said that he had asked state police to review the video and take whatever actions are appropriate.[132]

In Charleston, South Carolina, the director of that state's Department of Health and Human Services, Anthony Kreck, said the video filmed in his state "raises concerns about how well trained and supported our staff are to handle outrageous situations." He also expressed concern for the safety of the state employee with the figure ["Sean Murphy"] in the video "who could be interpreted as intimidating" and questioned why security wasn't called.[133]

New Hampshire Primary video (2012)

In January 2012, O'Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters. He stated that the video showed "the integrity of the elections process is severely comprised [sic]."[134] His team culled names from published obituaries, which were checked against public voter roll information. O'Keefe said his team broke no laws, as they did not pretend to be the deceased persons when they asked for the ballots, and they did not cast votes after receiving ballots. One of his associates' attempts was caught by a voting supervisor at the polling station who recognized that the name he gave was of a deceased individual; the associate in question left before police arrived.[135]

Reception

Sarah Parnass of ABC News reported that the video "either exposes why voting laws are too lax or comes close to itself being voter fraud (or both)..."[134] One media account referred to it as a stunt.[136] New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said, "I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they're found guilty of some criminal act."[137] The New Hampshire Attorney General and the US Attorney’s Office announced investigations into the video.[137]

New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Richard Head said he would investigate the possible weaknesses in the voting system,[138] but noted the state did not have a history of known fraud related to person[s] seeking ballot[s] in the name of a dead person or persons.[134] Head announced he would investigate the possibility that the filmmakers committed crimes while producing the videos.[134]

Hamline University law professor David Schultz said, "If they [O'Keefe's group] were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law", referring to Title 42, which prohibits procuring ballots fraudulently.[136] The New Hampshire Attorney General's office later dropped its investigation of O'Keefe for potential voter fraud in 2013.[139]

Patrick Moran (2012)

On October 24, 2012 a video was released showing Patrick Moran, son of then-U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), and a field director with his father's campaign, discussing a plan to cast fraudulent ballots, which was proposed to him by someone who posed as a fervent supporter of the campaign.[140] The person he was speaking with was a conservative activist with O'Keefe's Project Veritas, and was secretly recording the conversation.[141] Patrick Moran resigned from the campaign, saying he did not want to be a distraction during the election, stating:

"[A]t no point have I, or will I ever endorse any sort of illegal or unethical behavior. At no point did I take this person seriously. He struck me as being unstable and joking, and for only that reason did I humor him. In hindsight, I should have immediately walked away, making it clear that there is no place in the electoral process for even the suggestion of illegal behavior, joking or not."[141]

The Arlington County, Virginia Police Department was made aware of the video and opened a criminal investigation into "every component" of the matter.[142]

On January 31, 2013, Arlington County announced that the investigation, by its police department in collaboration with the Offices of the Virginia Attorney General and the Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney, had concluded and that no charges would be brought. The County stated: "Patrick Moran and the Jim Moran for Congress campaign provided full cooperation throughout the investigation. Despite repeated attempts to involve the party responsible for producing the video, they failed to provide any assistance."[143]

US–Mexico border-crossing (2014)

In August 2014, O'Keefe dressed up as Osama bin Laden and crossed the US–Mexico border in Texas in both directions to "show that our elected officials were lying to the American people" about border security. The incident was cited by U.S. Senator John McCain in Congressional hearings.[144][145]

Attempt to solicit voter fraud (2014)

In October 2014 O'Keefe and his two colleagues attempted to bait staffers for Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and then-U.S. Senator Mark Udall, as well as independent expenditure organizations, into approving voter fraud, according to several staffers who interacted with O'Keefe and his colleagues. Staffers began photographing O'Keefe's crew and advising them that what they were advocating was illegal; one nonprofit said they contacted police.[146]

Attempted sting of Open Society Foundations (2016)
On March 16, 2016, O'Keefe attempted to call Open Society Foundations under the assumed name of "Victor Kesh", describing himself as attached to "a, uh, foundation"[sic] seeking to "get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values."[sic] O'Keefe forgot to hang up after recording the voicemail, and several more minutes of audio were recorded, revealing that he was attached to Discover the Networks and planning a series of attempts to create embarrassing videos or other recordings of targeted groups.[33][147]

CNN undercover videos (2017)

On June 26, 2017, O'Keefe released a video on Project Veritas' YouTube channel that showed John Bonifield, a producer of health and medical stories for CNN, saying that CNN's coverage of the Russian investigation was for "ratings" and that the coverage was "mostly bullshit".[148] The video identified Bonifield as a supervising producer of CNN, but did not state that he was a supervising producer for CNN Health.[149] In a statement, CNN stated: "CNN stands by our medical producer John Bonifield. Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong, we welcome it and embrace it."[150][151] During a White House press briefing, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders encouraged people to watch the video "whether it's accurate or not".[151]

On June 28, 2017, O'Keefe released the second part of the series of undercover videos, by then dubbed "American Pravda". In the video, CNN anchor Van Jones said, "The Russia thing is just a big nothingburger."[152] When asked about the video in an email, CNN responded "lol".[153] During that same day, the videos were posted on Donald Trump's Instagram account.[154] Jones said that O'Keefe had deceptively edited the video to take his remarks out of context and was attempting to "pull off a hoax." Jones added that he believed that there probably was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.[155]

On June 30, 2017, O'Keefe released the third part of the undercover videos. Part 3 of the series showed CNN associate producer Jimmy Carr saying that Trump is "fucking crazy" and that "on the inside, we all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this, and that he does not have America's best interests". Carr also said "This is a man who's not actually a Republican, he just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn't believe anything that these people believe."[156] Additionally, he said American voters are "stupid as shit."[156] He also made comments about Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, calling her an "awful woman" and stating that she "looks like she got hit with a shovel".[156] In a fourth video published by Project Veritas on July 5, Carr criticized CNN co-anchor Chris Cuomo.[157]

Failed attempt to sting The Washington Post (2017)
Starting in July 2017, Project Veritas operative Jaime Phillips attempted to infiltrate The Washington Post and other media outlets by joining networking groups related to journalism and left-leaning politics. She and a male companion attended events related to the Post, and their conversations with journalists were sometimes covertly recorded.[158]

In November of 2017, The Washington Post reported that several women accused Republican Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of pursuing them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s.[159] Later that same month, Jaime Phillips approached The Washington Post and falsely claimed that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and that she had an abortion.[159][160] In conducting its usual fact-checking, the Post discovered multiple red flags in her story. They found a GoFundMe page in her name that said, “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt [sic] of the liberal MSM.” After a Post reporter confronted her with the inconsistencies during a video-recorded interview, Phillips denied that she was working with an organization that targets journalists, and said that she no longer wanted to do the story.[159] She was seen outside Project Veritas' office in Mamaroneck, New York, with her car remaining at the office's parking lot for more than an hour.[159] O'Keefe declined to comment about the woman's apparent connection to Project Veritas.[159][160] Instead of running a story about Phillips' supposed pregnancy, the Post published an article about the attempted sting operation. The Post decided to disclose Phillips' original discussions made off the record, saying they were not obligated to keep them confidential because she had deceived them.[159]

Hours after the Post published this story, O'Keefe released a video which he claimed exposed the newspaper's liberal bias.[161] The video includes undercover footage of conversations with two Post employees, national security reporter Dan Lamothe and product director Joey Marburger.[162] These employees explained to undercover Project Veritas operatives the difference between the news reporting of the Washington Post (which calls out the Trump administration’s missteps while giving “him credit where there’s credit” due) and the Post's opinion editorials; O'Keefe said that this exposed the Washington Post's "hidden agenda."[161][163]

O'Keefe was criticized for his failed sting, and The Washington Post was praised. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative praised the Post and called on conservative donors to stop giving money to O'Keefe's outfit.[164] Dan McLaughlin of the conservative National Review said that O'Keefe's sting was an "own goal" and that O'Keefe was doing a disservice to the conservative movement;[165] Jim Geraghty of the National Review made a similar assessment.[166] Byron York of The Washington Examiner said that O'Keefe's "idiocy" was "beyond boneheaded," and that "O'Keefe really ought to hang it up."[167] Ben Shapiro, the conservative editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said that the botched sting was "horrible, both morally and effectively."[167] Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic wrote, "If James O’Keefe respected the right-wing populists who make up the audience of Project Veritas... he would tell them the truth about all of the organizations that he targets. Instead, Project Veritas operates in bad faith, an attribute it demonstrated again this week in the aftermath of its bungled attempt to trick The Washington Post."[168] Noah Rothman of the conservative Commentary Magazine chastised O'Keefe for being exploitative of his audience: "No longer are institutions like Veritas dedicated to combating ignorance in their audience. They’re actively courting it."[169]

Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine said that O'Keefe, having set out prove that the Post was fake news, ended up disproving it. O’Keefe’s plot collapsed because it was premised on a ludicrously false worldview, wrote Chait. "The Washington Post does not, in fact, publish unverified accusations just because they’re against Republicans." O'Keefe's attempts to prove rampant voter fraud have failed "because voter fraud is not rampant."[170]

Reception

Project Veritas uses methods not employed by mainstream journalists[159] with O'Keefe referring to himself as a "guerrilla journalist".[171] Project Veritas operatives misrepresent their identities and use other methods not employed by mainstream journalists.[159] Such methods have stirred debate about what it means to be a journalist and what constitutes good journalistic practice, especially with respect to undercover work.[172]

Tim Kenneally and Daniel Frankel reported for thewrap.com on March 9, 2011 that some of O'Keefe's supporters referred to him as the right wing's answer to a long line of left-leaning "hybrid troublemakers who get put on the cover of Rolling Stone, like Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman".[173] In that same March 2011 report, Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was quoted as saying:

"What [O'Keefe] does isn't journalism. It's agitpop [sic], politi-punking, entrapment-entertainment. There is no responsible definition of journalism that includes what he does or how he does it. His success at luring his prey into harming themselves is a measure of how fallible and foolish anyone, including good people, can sometimes be."[173]

In reporting on allegations that O'Keefe had attempted in 2010 to tamper with Senator Landrieu's office phone system, Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Robertson of the New York Times posited that O'Keefe practiced a kind of "gonzo journalism" and his tactic is to "caricature the political and social values of his enemies by carrying them to outlandish extremes."[1]

Jonathan Seidl of TheBlaze said of the first NPR video, "the video, in the end, not only raises questions about NPR, but it also raises questions about undercover, gotcha journalism that can sometimes border on entrapment."[174] Scott Baker of TheBlaze wrote in March 2011 about the NPR videos, saying that O'Keefe was "unethical" because he calls himself an "investigative journalist" but "uses editing tactics that seem designed to intentionally lie or mislead about the material being presented."[74]

In a March 2011 interview with O'Keefe, NPR journalist Bob Garfield asked, referring to the ACORN videos, "If your journalistic technique is the lie, why should we believe anything you have to say?"[175] O'Keefe responded that his techniques should be characterized as a form of guerrilla theater rather than "lying" – "you’re posing as something you’re not, in order to capture candid conversations from your subject. But I wouldn’t characterize it as, as lying.”[175]

In July 2011, Dean Mills, the dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, compared O'Keefe to Michael Moore and said, "Some ethicists say it is never right for a journalist to deceive for any reason, but there are wrongs in the world that will never be exposed without some kind of subterfuge."[124] The Atlantic journalist Conor Friedersdorf responded that O'Keefe's "mortal sin" wasn't that he misled his subjects, but that he misled his audience by presenting his videos to the public in "less than honest ways that go far beyond normal 'selectivity.'"[176]

Works

O'Keefe, James (2013). Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy. New York: Threshold Editions. ISBN 9781476706191. OCLC 893099977.

O'Keefe, James (2018). American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1250154644



ANOTHER LESS THAN WORSHIPFUL VIEW OF JAMES O’KEEFE

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/james-okeefe-breakthrough-memoir
Republicans Ana Marie Cox column
James O'Keefe's Breakthrough: memoir of a merry prankster
Ana Marie Cox

The rightwing activist who made his name 'punking' progressive organisations is a lively raconteur, but not a self-knowing one
Sun 7 Jul 2013 09.00 EDT First published on Sun 7 Jul 2013 09.00 EDT
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Photograph -- The conservative political activist and video prankster James O'Keefe. Photograph: AP Photo/Haraz N Ghanbari

The memoir of political prankster James O'Keefe – most famous for stinging Acorn and NPR – just passed Dan Brown's Inferno on the Amazon bestseller list. This feat may seem odd here in the dog days of summer: on its surface, O'Keefe's Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy is not much of a beach read. I am probably saying more about Brown than O'Keefe in assuring you that Breakthrough is every bit the overheated techno-thriller as Inferno – ripe with conspiracies, pulse-pounding narrow escapes, mistaken identities, false accusations, an array of powerful forces bent on doing evil, and even a kind of Holy Grail (spoiler alert!): to break through into the mainstream media, to “get the message out.”

O'Keefe is as much a child of James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino as he is of Andrew Brietbart or Matt Drudge (though the latter two are the ones who've nurtured him most directly). Breakthrough is larded with as many references to popular films as it is with their tropes. He compares his media strategy to the black goo in "Prometheus" (he said it, not me); watching the fruits of one "sting" unfold, he feels "like that guy in the movie Limitless". He's a student of more obscure fare, as well – thinking of his desire to go undercover as a pimp to Acorn offices is, he imagines that:

"Philippe Petit, the Frenchman who in 1974 violated just about every rule of God and New York City by slinging a wire between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and walking across it, had a similar urge. He had his own dream, his own little posse, and his own sense of destiny. We both hoped to make the world a better place, he by entertaining it, me by exposing it. The difference, I suppose, was that the outcome would be a little more brutal if he fell off the wire than if Hannah [the woman playing his prostitute], say, fell off her platform shoes."

Yes, I suppose. But O'Keefe earns most of these pop culture comparisons with the aforementioned set pieces, such as a mad dash down Sixth Avenue to a Glenn Beck taping, "hard drive in hand, cords dangling, dodging cars and pedestrians both, my heart pounding, looking skyward now and then as the rain clouds gathered, and wondering if I'd live to be 26." There's also the brutal interrogation sequence, after O'Keefe is arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones of Senator Mary Landrieu:

"They took off the chains and shackles and left the handcuffs on. Pure Stockholm syndrome – I was beginning to feel grateful … My words simply did not register. His indifference was frustrating, unnerving. I could see how easy it was to break a prisoner. I was close."

The Landrieu incident and its aftermath actually undergirds most of the book's deepest purple prose, flights of rhetoric untethered by the fact that O'Keefe is perhaps the only federal prisoner in recent memory "broken" by the thought of missing out on a winter holiday:

"A nightmare day in windowless cages had shrunk my will to nothing. Plus, I had a plane to catch. I was supposed to go skiing at Tahoe."

Forget waterboarding, buy those guys at Gitmo lift tickets!

Now, I'm under no illusion that it's Breakthrough's gripping yarn that's propelled it upward on the bestseller list. However refreshing his narrative structure – the book is essentially a series of clock-and-dagger capers – the book's villains are the same ones that pop up in the work of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin or any of the other CPAC-marquee authors you'd find shelved next to O'Keefe. The bad guys are the mainstream media and the progressive/liberal power structure it supports.

O'Keefe doesn't actually name the villains specifically very often. Whenever he unloads about the double standard to which he feels held, there's a lot of "the same people that said X, said Y", as in Acorn "seized the House banking committee hearing room" in 1991 "without reproach from the same media that were now libeling me a thug and a felon". Taking him at his word that there was no critical coverage of Acorn in 1991, I mean, "the same"? Really? Even Sam Donaldson's hair has changed since then.

But lack of specificity about the enemy is key to the appeal of the sort of genre O'Keefe nominally fits into. Readers pick up political polemics not for the excitement they provide, but for the comfort: the articulation of a set of beliefs, supported by facts ("facts", really) that fall so neatly into place no one dare question them. To the extent these books provoke emotion, it's only to sustain outrage already felt, to normalize it.

Breakthrough does those things. Fact-checkers will do a better job than I at ferreting out the howlers of conservative folklore it contains, though I did pause to Google one tidbit that struck close to home (literally). O'Keefe masterminded a "sting" of Minnesota voter registration drives that purported to show how easily people who were obviously not who they said they were ("Tim Tebow") could get voter registration applications.

Well, yes, they can get the applications. Are they then registered? Not necessarily.

He also asserts that "there is reliable evidence that more than a thousand ineligible felons voted illegally" and "nearly 200" felons were "convicted" of voter fraud in Minnesota after the 2008 elections – an important claim given Al Franken's narrow victory. Hello, Google? One hundred and thirteen people (not necessarily felons who voted) have been convicted of some form of voter fraud in Minnesota since 2009, and it's unclear if any of those votes were actually cast or counted.

What's more, O'Keefe uses these numbers to support the need for a "voter ID" law, like the one Minnesota rejected last fall, despite the fact that a voter ID law would do little to keep felons from attempting to cast a vote: there's nothing about committing a felony that would keep one from getting an ID.

Twisting evidence to fit an ideological agenda gives the lie to O'Keefe's notion that he's a fearless truth-teller who comes to his partisanship only after his exposure to the deceits of the other side. He fashions himself an Abbie Hoffman of the right (he quotes Hoffman approvingly), but he's really more of an Eddie Haskell.

Indeed, O'Keefe is such a diligent soldier for the conservative cause that I doubt he set out to write a book either so interesting or as intentionally revealing as Breakthrough is. Much as with his video stunts, O'Keefe's lust for theatricality, combined with youthful arrogance, seems to have made Breakthrough more informative than he intended.

O'Keefe's videos have an obvious ideological appeal. He protests that his target is simply "fraud" or "abuse", but his victims are, to a person, aligned with progressive causes. I've found his work to be fascinating on another level entirely: they pit two forms of performance against each other. On the one side, the flamboyantly subversive O'Keefe and his allies, posing as pimps or Irish terrorists or lederhosen-clad Colombians (yep). On the other side, the oppressed (more than oppressive) bureaucrat: the office worker, the poll-watcher, the county clerk.

O'Keefe and his band have agency; they can flout rules and go off-script. Bureaucrats have to perform the motions prescribed to them, regardless of what their personal beliefs are. Yes, he has captured instances of workers bending the rules – or saying that the rules are stupid – but more often, he documents something far more mundane: civic workers trying to do their jobs under baffling circumstances.

If there is one remarkable takeaway from all the hours of video O'Keefe has produced, it is that bureaucrats are far more kind and patient than popular culture, and certainly O'Keefe, give them credit for. He thinks he's showing us the casual cruelty of systematic oppression à la 1984. He seems to forget that Winston Smith was a bureaucrat. Smith's tragedy was being trapped in the system; O'Keefe has the luxury of operating outside of it – and he is blissfully unaware of that privilege.

That is perhaps the most subtle of the privileges O'Keefe glosses over. Although I enjoyed a lot of the cat-and-mouse intrigue he lingers over, the book's laugh-out-loud moments are the product of guileless petulance. Of being on federal probation and barred from travel without permission, he grieves:

"There is something soul-killing about being confined anywhere, especially given the political nature of that confinement."

Don't feel too sorry for him: his "confinement" is to a restored country carriage house. Or do feel sorry for him – it was in New Jersey.

Indeed, when Breakthrough bored me, it was during O'Keefe's lengthy detours into the details of that probation. He really and truly seems to believe he was a political prisoner of some sort, the target of specific harassment by a liberal government, rather than the victim (like so many) of an over-worked and under-staffed judicial system. A victim with, you know, media appearances to make:

"Early on, I went in to ask permission to be on Sean Hannity's TV show. 'Why Hannity?' she asked. I told her I was trying to get my story out. Dorothy missed the irony of my needing permission from a federal court officer to tell the story of my mistreatment at the hands of other federal court officers."

Someone is missing some irony there, but I'm not sure it's Dorothy.

The vehemence of O'Keefe's complaints about his treatment at the hands of the federal criminal system would make sense if, you know, he wasn't a criminal. He pled guilty to the misdemeanor he was charged with.

You can argue that what he did shouldn't be against the law, but that's not the same as saying the law should just be ignored. He repeatedly confuses his right to free speech with his right to escape consequences. He waves the first amendment in front of his probation officer, saying that he has the right to make a video mocking the judge who sentenced him – and then seems shocked that the probation officer thinks it prudent to restrict his travel. With typical humility, he muses:

"The higher-ups who were leaning on Hattersley made me rethink which country I pledged allegiance to."

All of this blindness, ego and misguided idealism is easily attributed to the fact of O'Keefe being still in his 20s. He is a savant of sorts, with a genius for publicity yet a stunted understanding of himself. I was so charmed by his brio and lack of self-awareness, I'm even tempted to believe him on the subject of his most disturbing exploits: a near-miss at active sexual harassment when he planned to trap a CNN correspondent on a "love boat", and an accusation of sexual misconduct (also involving stranding a female alone) by a former colleague.

On both counts, O'Keefe pleads ignorance of wrongdoing. The former, he says, was just a joke; the second he alleges to be a plot to entrap him. (After she presses charges, he notes, "Nadia was clearly playing hardball. I wondered if someone was paying her to play.")

The truth is likely closer to what's already obvious: O'Keefe is so convinced of his righteousness he can't understand why pretending to sexually harass someone isn't funny. And his ego is large enough to obscure any awareness that some actions can seem threatening, even as it amplifies actions taken against him.

O'Keefe's persecution complex exists side-by-side with a life so charmed as to provide Breakthrough with a real-life fairytale ending: heading over the Tappan Zee bridge over the Hudson River in moonlight, off to that long-delayed California sojourn, his probation release flapping in the breeze.

The woman bringing charges is an African American "dressed to the max", "her braided hair cascad[ing] dramatically to her waist". O'Keefe suspects she's not the one calling the shots. But, he says, the judge was "my old baseball coach … I do catch the occasional break." On the verge of having the charges dismissed, he ponders the scene:

"This was all so bizarre, so oddly American."

Yes, a young white man accused by a beautiful black woman of sexual miscounduct is about to walk out of the courtroom without having to answer for a thing. That really is "so bizarre, so oddly American". But it's a version of America O'Keefe seems unable to see. Someone get this man a viewfinder.