James O'Keefe

James O'Keefe      (journalist, activist)
Born	28 June 1984
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Rutgers University
Founder of	Project Veritas
Interests	• Andrew Breitbart • ACORN • US/Democratic Party
Interest of	Hannah Giles
Set up Project Veritas in 2006, from which he was ousted in 2023, right after exposing Pfizer.

James O'Keefe is an American journalist and activist. He set up Project Veritas in 2006 from which he was ousted in 2023; he continued his work with the O'keefe Media Group.

O'Keefe and Project Veritas became known for their numerous sting operations, most often against "liberal" targets, where they under assumed identities try to capture candid conversations from the subjects of their investigations. The stings have exposed a number of deep state activities, and the cynical attitudes of deep state operatives.

Criticism

Criticism of O'Keefe particularly focus on excessive selective editing, where recordings are some times cut, quotes taken out of context, or where the the chronology of events is distorted in such a way as to put the subject in maximum bad light. Other methods include entrapment, where a large number of potential subjects are approached and baited, before finding one that will agree to illegal acts.

Background

After graduating from Rutgers University, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia, under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe called his mentor. 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 jeopardized the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation.

Project Veritas

Full article: Project Veritas

His undercover sting operations include ACORN, Planned Parenthood ("there's way too many black people in Ohio"), CNN (CNN's coverage of Russiagate was "Because it's ratings" and that the coverage was "mostly bullshit"), and ABC News anchor Amy Robach revealing the network "quashed" her Jeffrey Epstein story during the 2016 election cycle.

O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in Louisiana 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. The charges in the case were later reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses.

His January 2023 sting of a Pfizer's Director of Research and Development, Jordon Trishton Walker exposed the cynical attitude in the company: "One of the things we're exploring is like, why don't we just mutate it [COVID] ourselves so we could create -- preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we're gonna do that though, there's a risk of like, as you could imagine -- no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating fucking viruses."

Ousted from Project Veritas

In February 2023, O'Keefe was ousted from Project Veritas by the board. The ousting happened right a few days after the publication of the sting against Pfizer. The nominal reason for the sacking was disagreements over management style and O'Keefe using company funds for personal expenses.

O'Keefe pointed out: "So what has changed in the last three weeks? The only thing that has changed is that we broke the biggest story in our organization's history...with 50 million views. And suddenly, just a few days after that… an unusual emergency happened. On Thursday, February 2nd, that's a few days after the Pfizer story, I was informed by an officer of Project Veritas on the phone while en route to the airport that he would resign unless I stepped down as CEO.

FBI search warrants and allegedly stolen Biden diary (2021)

On November 6, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed an early morning court-ordered search of O'Keefe's apartment in Mamaroneck, New York two days after searching the homes of two of O'Keefe's associates in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2020. Excerpts allegedly from the diary were posted two weeks before the 2020 US presidential election.

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed concern that lacking "a clear link between members of Project Veritas and allegations of criminal activities" the FBI raids and seizure of evidence were a "dangerous precedent that could allow law enforcement to search and confiscate reporters' unpublished source material in vague attempts to identify whistleblowers."

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