Conservative provocateur James O’Keefe III will be hit with a million-dollar lawsuit on Thursday, sources behind the filing tell The Intercept.
The lawsuit accuses O’Keefe and his organization, Project Veritas, with breaking local and federal wiretap laws and running afoul of other statutes, dubbing him and two colleagues “modern-day Watergate burglars.”
O’Keefe operative Allison Maass posed as a progressive activist, using an elaborate cover story and falsified documents to win an internship with the Democratic campaign consultants Democracy Partners.
“Basically O’Keefe and Maass were modern-day Watergate burglars. They used fraud to get Maass a position as an intern at Democracy Partners so they could steal documents and secretly videotape conversations,” said Joe Sandler, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs. “There is no question that, in doing so, they violated federal and D.C. law and should be held liable for the damages suffered by our clients as a result.”
O’Keefe’s scheme involved having a man claiming to be a potential donor to the Democratic group Americans United for Change ask Robert Creamer, a principal at Democracy Partners, if his niece, going by the name Angela Brandt, could do volunteer work. Brandt was in fact Maass.
Maass, much like the burglars who broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters ahead of the 1972 campaign (though without the physical break-in), pilfered a large cache of documents. Maass also secretly filmed interactions with Democracy Partners staff.
O’Keefe worked closely with the right-wing local news chain Sinclair Broadcast Group in rolling out the videos produced from the sting. President Trump’s top adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner had struck a deal during the campaign with Sinclair that exchanged access for favorable coverage. Sinclair is deeply influential at the local level, having the trust of local television networks.
Project Veritas also distributed the videos through the conservative outlet Breitbart, which was a veritable arm of the Trump campaign during the election; its former honcho, Steve Bannon, took a leave to officially run Trump’s campaign, though he stayed in close touch with reporters there, according to sources familiar with the relationship. The Trump Foundation previously gave Project Veritas $10,000 and, after the election, Trump called O’Keefe to thank him and invite him to the inauguration.
O’Keefe told The Intercept he plans to aggressively challenge the suit. “We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” O’Keefe said later in the statement. “We will find out who is funding this lawsuit. We will never stop exposing the truth. We will not back down.”
Creamer, a plaintiff in the Thursday suit and a central figure in the O’Keefe videos, announced he was “stepping back” from his work on behalf of the Clinton campaign in the wake of the video release. Operative Scott Foval left his job with AUC. The videos alleged a voter-fraud scheme and came after Trump had made unfounded accusations of widespread fraud. He used the videos to claim vindication.
Wisconsin’s attorney general looked into charging Foval, and his office announced in April it was closing the case. Days later, under pressure, he reversed himself, and said the investigation remains open.
Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of Public Representation agreed to take on the lawsuit, suggesting that it may have legal merit.
Institute of Public Representation staff attorney Yael Bromberg said her center got behind the case “because the fraud that O’Keefe and Project Veritas perpetrate debase our politics and has no place in our democracy.”
“When we heard about the manner and method which it took place, it occurred to us this is an issue about democracy, not partisanship,” she added. “This is not about journalism, it’s about political espionage.”
It is legal in Washington to record a conversation with another person without their consent, but Bromberg argued that O’Keefe and Maass are not shielded by that law because of the civil conspiracy, fraud, and duplicity behind the project.
Update: June 1, 2017, 4:47 p.m.
This piece was updated to include a quote from O’Keefe’s statement and clarify that Project Veritas employees did not physically break into Democracy Partners’ office.
Top photo: James O’Keefe holds a news conference at the National Press Club on Sept. 1, 2015, in Washington.
I have no love for O’Keefe, but filing lawsuits to silence political speech is nothing to be proud of.
If that was what was happening, I’d agree with you — but you have to have an extremely liberal interpretation of the word ‘speech’ to include fraud; is manufacturing fake ‘evidence’ to willfully deceive through the press actually political speech?
I thought I had an incredibly permissive view of what ought to be covered by such protections (especially concerning content) but I just see that behavior as such a perversion of the ideal that this sort of suit surely cannot be considered analogous to a SLAPP suit or the like.
Maybe if the MSM: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and the three traditional “over the air” networks would spend more time on reporting facts and less on “commentary” and “opinion” shows, there would be less incentive for “flies on the wall” like O’ Keefe. Nor would “underground” news-sites like Breitbart be so prevalent.
Also, piss on far-right shock-jocks like Alex Jones who claim that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are “Anti-Christs”. If they have irrefutable evidence show it. Put up or Shut up! There is no such thing as “alternate”‘ reality. Either something is real or it is not.
Finally Ajit Pi will make the Internet (the “Super-Information Highway”) little more than a platinum-paved toll-road for for our nation’s extremely wealthy and powerful.
For a balanced view of O’Keefe work and conservative attacks against liberals go see Acorn and the Firestorm.
ACORN was an O’Keefe/Breitbart’s first victim. The story involves a undercover activists pretending to be a Pimp and Prostitute, Fighting for the Minimum Wage, Voter Fraud, and the Rise Fake News and Breitbart.com and Donald Trump. After critical praise and Oscar buzz at its Tribeca World Premiere, and winning the Special Jury Prize for American Truth Seeker at the Montclair Film Fest, the doc is having a special screening at the AFI DOCS Film Festival on Thursday, June 15 / 3:30PM / LANDMARK theater.
The screening: Thursday, Jun 15 / 3:30PM / LANDMARK theater in DC.
CBS NEWS, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, AND MONSTERS & CRITICS (AMONG OTHERS) SAY ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM IS ONE OF THE MUST-SEE FILMS AT Tribeca Film Festival 2017
“Good buzz on social media surrounding the Oscar best documentary race.”
Hollywood Reporter
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tribeca-political-activist-causes-a-stir-at-acorn-firestorm-premiere-996637
“5 Must-See Movies at Tribeca Film Festival ” http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/5-see-movies-at-tribeca-film-festival-thr-news-995602
https://www.msn.com/en-ie/video/watch/5-must-see-movies-at-tribeca-film-festival-thr-news/vp-BBA3gbe
“This scandal [portrayed in ACORN and the Firestorm] is not even that distant history and yet already feels like the origin story of today’s fake news phenomenon. It’s fascinating to revisit now – along with those who participated in it originally – and see how much this moment forecasted so much of what was to come.”
POV Blog, Tom Roston, former Premiere magazine senior editor http://www.pbs.org/pov/blog/docsoup/2017/04/2017-tribeca-film-fest-documentary-slate/
“Montclair Film Festival Winner, Special Jury Prize / American Truth Seeker Award”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lady-macbeth-strong-island-award-winners-at-montclair-film-festival-2017-1002004
“The Best Documentaries of the Tribeca Film Festival”
An informative and often infuriating, deep-diving into the history of the organization… a nimble analysis of the FOX echo chamber – and, ultimately, the impossibility of out-shouting it.”
Flavorwire.
http://flavorwire.com/604548/the-best-and-worst-documentaries-of-the-tribeca-film-festival-2/5
“ACORN and the Firestorm goes beyond the 24-hour news cycle and cuts to the heart of the great political divide.”
Independent Television Service
“16 must-see films at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival “
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/movies/16-must-see-films-at-the-2017-tribeca-film-festival/
“23 Must-See Movies at Tribeca Film Festival”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/tribeca-film-festival-2017-23-see-movies-994443
“Political Activist Causes a Stir at ‘ACORN and the Firestorm’ Premiere”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/tribeca-political-activist-causes-a-stir-at-acorn-firestorm-premiere-996637
https://www.yahoo.com/movies/tribeca-political-activist-tries-cause-stir-acorn-firestorm-024405950.html
http://montclairlocal.news/wp/index.php/2017/04/20/stings-and-arrows-acorn-and-the-firestorm-comes-to-montclair-film-festival/
If you are any form of ‘leaker’ or information grabber and are even totally legal they will portray you as the worst traitor/terrorist known in history. The agency boys just hate it when you use their tactics against them. It all boils down to revealing government crime but being the worst of criminals for doing it. They can’t just come out and plainly say that anyone who reveals government crimes commits a crime but that is what is happening. It also takes extreme measures to get get the goods on these high placed criminals. It’s the same as government agency personnel infiltrating the mafia or posing as an imposter while wearing a bug. The Mafia goes after snitches and the government goes after leakers and the basic differences are few if any.
I wish the Intercept was more supportive of courageous efforts to get the truth out to the public. I’m at the opposite end from James O’Keefe politically, but I appreciate what he does sometimes. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim gives a highly slanted portrayal of O’Keefe, using deceptive words like “theft”, which don’t come anywhere doing justice to the public service that O’Keefe is doing. Grim’s article, and the lawyers suing O’Keefe who are quoted at length in the article, make a big deal about how O’Keefe’s group uses deception. Well, in some cases it’s necessary to deceive institutions with clout in order to gather important facts that the public should be informed about. Think about some classic examples of exposés by journalists and researchers — the wonderful work done by Nellie Bly, or Timothy Diamond’s undercover work as a nursing home employee. O’Keefe and his allies were taking on a powerful organization, an important part of a major-party presidential campaign network, and they couldn’t have found out what they did without deception. And it’s clear that O’Keefe and his undercover agent Alison Maass acted with a lot of courage, doing things that many would be scared to do, just as Nellie Bly did. Is Grim against Nellie Bly and Timothy Diamond too?
Grim says that O’Keefe and Maass “pilfered” documents. That’s a real stretch. Even the high-powered lawsuit against O’Keefe and Maass, which Grim covers so approvingly, doesn’t accuse them of theft. What O’Keefe and Maass did was to make surreptitious copies of documents so that they could potentially expose them to the public if they showed arguable wrongdoing. The firm that O’Keefe and Maass infiltrated never lost access to the documents, they just lost their ability to keep the public from seeing them. If that’s theft, then whistleblowers are thieves. But it’s not stealing from somebody if you let that somebody keep on having their documents and you only help others see the wrongdoing that the documents reveal. When you do an exposé of wrongdoing, the wrongdoer may lose some of their reputation. But it’s not theft to take away somebody’s unjustified reputation — because you’re not entitled to automatically keep that, despite how political consultants feel about this stuff. In earlier centuries, our society did not apply the term “theft” to those who inform the people about wrongdoing or other matters that deserve public concern.
I think the Intercept in this case is just accepting some of the corporate elite’s ridiculously inflated ideas of what constitutes “intellectual property”.
The lawsuit against O’Keefe and Maass claims that they violated a “fiduciary duty” when Maass went undercover as an employee, but so what? Those who care about informing the public shouldn’t get too serious about respecting some alleged fiduciary duty to help your boss conceal wrongdoing. Snowden didn’t respect that kind of “fiduciary duty”, and neither did Timothy Diamond and others.
I do have some quarrels with O’Keefe. I wish he didn’t edit so heavily, although in some cases he does have some real wrongdoing to reveal that doesn’t just depend on the “misleading editing” that his targets use as an excuse. I wish he didn’t only target liberals and Democrats, because this kind of wrongdoing is done by both parties. But he does give an idea of the kind of things that are out there. He explores what people can be talked into, and that doesn’t always represent an accurate guide to what people would do in normal circumstances, but it sometimes helps gives you an idea of what’s going on behind the scenes. If you mentally adjust what he’s revealing by taking these factors into account, he helps give you a better idea of what’s going on behind closed doors, and that’s an important public service.
Well, Mr. Rose, you have made an extraordinarily good attempt at framing Mr. O’Keefe in a favorable light.
Is this the same O’Keefe that presented himself as a pimp to record a conversation with an ACORN employee, then edit the recording to reflect poorly on the group or the same O’Keefe that again, recording conversations with Planned Parenthood employees about fetal tissue, edited the conversations to discredit that group?
I would say that’s more like common hoodwinkery than “journalism”.
Actually, it’s yellow, spineless and rather like a thug that breaks kneecaps for a living.
I see he’s O’Keefe the third, may we all pray this poor specimen of breeding doesn’t produce a fourth, as I think that may make a good case for the re-introduction of eugenics.
Just a thought, Mr. Rose.
Amen, Grace. Amen!
The O’Keefe videos of Planned Parenthood were worth doing, I think. I read the unedited transcripts, not the edited videos. That work by O’Keefe told me something I didn’t know before: that medical providers are willing to effectively sell body parts (getting a small amount of compensation in return for transferring the body parts), and are even willing to change how they do operations on a patient in order to satisfy those who are compensating them for the body parts. That’s not putting patients first, and it’s clearly wrong when it’s done for undisclosed compensation. I’m sure many medical providers do this kind of thing for all kinds of operations, not just Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a group that knows it’s in the public eye and knows what it does will be subject to controversy — so the fact that PP is apparently used to doing some of this body-part stuff, and had some willingness to be talked into doing more, means that non-abortion medical providers probably do a lot of this every day. I think it was a little misleading that the focus of O’Keefe’s report was just on PP, but his motivation of discrediting PP helped me realize more about what lots of medical providers do. So it was informative, I was glad he did it, and he shouldn’t have been prosecuted for it. The way PP responded was to appeal to the sympathy that many have for PP and the visceral dislike that many have for O’Keefe’s conservative views, and PP managed to get many of its supporters to believe that it was all deceptive editing and that PP did nothing wrong and was only a victim. I know that’s the kind of thing that PP is used to doing — they don’t see efforts to be fair to the other side as compatible with their role. But it’s still wrong.
@Grace: At the end of your comment, you transition from defending the PP side to suggesting support of eugenics. That discredits you ethically. You show a classic case of authoritarian hypocrisy when you start by associating yourself with the cause of supporting reproductive freedom, and then transition to saying there should be eugenic efforts to keep people like O’Keefe from reproducing (just because he’s one of your political opponents who reveals embarrassing stuff that you’d rather not see revealed). I see you’re not the only person who thinks that way. But I don’t think that shows a tight link between PP supporters and eugenics. As always, one can find some authoritarian hypocrites in any part of the political spectrum; the fact that any worthwhile value will be abused in this way by some people doesn’t stop it being worthwhile. Personally, I think it can and should be possible to support reproductive rights (and even to have some support for modern-day Planned Parenthood) without descending into eugenics, authoritarianism, or hypocrisy. And your comment strengthens my hope that there will be more people like O’Keefe in future, working for conservative as well as liberal causes.
‘I read the unedited transcripts, not the edited videos.’
You’re a liar. Your summation reveals you have no understanding of the matter.
Mr. Rose, you are incorrect in your assumptions in my post.
I was attacking O’Keefe and his tactics to take down any group. He represents the political thugs that operate in the sleaziest of ways to help or harm whomever engaged him.
I do not call that journalism.
I’m surprised anyone would be proud of what he does or think he does anything more than appear foolish.
If you are saying this is the best Mr. O’Keefe can do…hoodwinkery and thuggery….then I stand by my comment and hope that if this best from the third in a blood line, why bother with a fourth.
Poor breeding, Mr. Rose, poor breeding.
No, he did not represent himself as a pimp when he was dealing with ACORN employees. He represented himself as the boyfriend of a young woman who was trying to get away from her pimp and help some younger women get away as well. The ridiculous fur coat getup was inserted in the actually deceptively edited footage; he wore a button-down shirt and nice pants when he was talking to ACORN employees. Brad Friedman of bradblog.com has been working hard to get the real facts out for years. You can read much, much more at his website.
Please don’t do scammer O’Keefe’s work for him by repeating his false stories.
Well. Rose,
I’ll be less polite than Grace.
Your verbosity does not disguise your bs.
But the issue of funding is important.
What is the funding source for Veritas? Oh, Project Veritas, which would be more aptly named Project Dishonesty, where would that money trail lead?
I might be on the opposite side of the political spectrum, but I applaud your honesty and support for a free and investigative press.
You mean project veritas is being sued for using the exact same tactics the FBI and all other law enforcement personnel/agencies use daily?..
Where do I send money to help him defend himself from crazy libtards
Nedtard — look it up on the internet.
Giving a false name to get a job and then stealing stuff out of the office sounds like a straight-up case of theft to me.
I’m pretty sure you can’t crusade for open information and transparency by lying about your own name. You really can’t confuse “journalist” with “spy”. Journalists give you their real name, and indeed identify themselves as journalists when seeking information. THAT’s what honesty and transparency look like.
Courts have decided that police “stings” for actual criminal acts are lawful, and it’s lawful (indeed, necessary) for journalists to cover them; but a journalist participating in a sting, much less running it, and obtaining information based on false witness, cross an important line.
Even if the young lady had not stolen from the victims, if she had just reported about things she had seen and heard in the office, it would have been very bad journalism, but not unlawful. (Unlawful to misrepresent your identity in order to commit fraud, but if no crime was committed under the false identity, the law is pretty much indifferent.) As soon as theft was committed under the false identity, however, the false name became a second crime.
Hey, not a lawyer, but that’s how it was described in my “Law 20″ class in high school…
Nice try, but “theft” assumes an element of personal enrichment that’s missing in this case. The motive for O’Keefe was informing the public.
Regardless, OKeefe didn’t do anything that numerous journalists haven’t done before. In many cases to do a story on the environment, animal rights, workers rights or corruption.
If this lawsuit is successful, it’ll be a huge setback for journalism.
Hey Vic, It’s obvious you’re not a lawyer. Nor are you a journalist, you probably don’t care about truth, either.
What a laugh you worthless O’Keefe trolls have provided here.
Nice try, indeed.
No worries, Daddy will pick up the tab.
What a shame that Daddy’s dollars can’t seem to buy a good gene pool.
“The videos alleged a voter fraud scheme…”
What was this scheme again? NOT ANOTHER Democratic vote-manipulation scheme! The details of said scheme being largely ignored, even though it drives YET ANOTHER blue team shuffle ( Foval’s step down). So,..these fraudulent Foval deeds in AUC, I will wager, will be buried within the Corporate News evangelistic mash up. That aspect will NOT interest them a bit. It will be a lost aspect of this story, focusing, as this one has, one the Breitbart/Watergate-style infiltration instead. “Project Veritas-gate” will be relentlessly called upon as a smoke screen to break up the endless Russian narrative on MSNBC and written about in the WP/NYT, directing the conversation to wiretap law-breaking by a conservative Trump manipulator of the vote. Creamer is plaintiff with who else? Me thinks Podesta/Russia/S.Rich has just been trumped.
I find this very amusing. Podesta leaks barely skimmed by national media and Seth Rich wholly ignored, (except to discredit anyone who IS poking into them), I wonder if the Corp Media gnats will pick this story up?
How come it’s only rich conservatives that do the pilfering? Some might say that since most of the media’s propaganda machine was trained in C
Whoops, trained in Clintonease, this lawsuit will serve to stifle any of the content that was captured and demand all officials refrain from ‘speculation’ on this ongoing legal case.
So true.
James O’Keefe has previously been successfully sued for his highly edited/doctored videos that were incredibly deceptive. Until he releases the raw, unedited video of this, we have no reason to believe the narrative constructed by his tapes. While it would be smart to remain skeptical of *anyone* who release such sensational material without showing the raw footage, James O’Keefe already has a proven track record in this area. Trusting his edited video is downright foolish.
Highly factual, right leaning National Review has released this article condemning Seth Rich “trutherism” http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447903/sean-hannity-seth-rich-conspiracy-theory-disgrace Bottom line, there’s no evidence to support these wild conspiracy theories, and you’d do well to ignore them.
Unless those conspiracy theories are about the Russian’s tampering with the election, of course. No real evidence is necessary. I think there is overwhelming interest in this country in the murder of Seth Rich. The government OF THE PEOPLE absolutely should open a public inquiry into both O’Keefe and Seth Rich. No one believes in this myth of democracy. There is no question that American’s are on their own. As for the National Review, I am a Gore Vidal loyalist. William Buckley Jr. stood for everything that was and is wrong w/Capitalism and Corporatocracy.
Alas, Democrats can’t really speak from a place of moral superiority anymore.
Clutching their pearls at the Seth Rich conspiracies, while spreading and promoting outlandish conspiracy theories about Russia, is smug, liberal hypocrisy in a nutshell.
It’s sad that wannabee journalists like the Independent attack real ones like O’keefe.
Must be jelousy
Journalists do not lie, steal, and misrepresent in order to tell a story that will further their political aims.
O’Keefe is a liar, a thief, and a propagandist who selectively edits material in order to tell a story that will further his political aims. You demean the profession of journalism by associating him with it.
Yeah that must be it. When has the independent ever published the kind of devastating political exposes that Jimmy O’Keefe cub reporter has?
http://www.salon.com/2015/09/01/is_this_a_joke_reporters_laugh_in_the_face_of_conservative_provocateur_james_okeefe_at_his_own_press_conference/
I’m sure that’s it, just jealousy.
I hate to see the Watergate burglar’s names besmirched by this association.
Last time I checked, isn’t O’Keefe on probation?
(insert labored sigh here) i can only say that had the DNC not cheated there asses off and been
duplicitous pricks in the highest order there would be no ‘scandal’. I’m not sure what was in the
pilfered material, can’t seem to find it, but i take the view that unlike private citizens any and all
public officials are 100% public property (not community property as per Steel Panther), likewise anyone vying for public office.
i recall a certain gentleman from vermont ran a campaign that was almost tiresome in its openness. there was no need for a perpetual shroud of secrecy around that campaign and
any scandal had to be completely fabricated from whole cloth.
Violating the privacy of US citizens and fraud upon US citizens and even theft by deception to rob the population as wallstreet did is all legal. That is because the thieves and their elected whores (the Dumb&dumbers) run the country. Always good entertainment and a feast to behold.
I don’t understand the argument here. The way it reads, it’s as if it’s OK to tape record a conversation with someone else unless you fibbed on a job application. Which doesn’t make any sense.
The part about “pilfering” the documents could be more straightforward. I mean, just because you get a job as a janitor at IBM doesn’t let you get away scot-free if you are caught with five hard drives full of their new source code. But I don’t know the situation here.
We should be careful not to let any liberal partisanship we may have get to the point of supporting precedents otherwise being set in “ag-gag laws” and such. We need to have some very clear, very deep thinking about what rights people have and don’t have where spying by employees is concerned, and some of the answers are hard, but they have to be universal, not based on which prejudice applies most at the moment.
“We should be careful not to let any liberal partisanship…”
Because the conservatives are not partisan in the slightest.
I have no illusions about that! But siding with liberals on many issues, I feel like usually it’s up to the liberals to be the adults in the room … though yes, there are some notable exceptions. What I mean is that even if I sympathize with a liberal perspective in the recent election, trying to defend the pathetic little portfolio of civil liberties we haven’t managed to lose yet is more important.
Edit:
“It is legal in Washington to record a conversation with another person without their consent…”
Should be illegal?
Thanks for the write-up, Ryan,.
Never-mind – Looks like I’m mixing my Washington’s’ up. But then, how would another party be “shielded by that law” if it is single party consent?
Geez. Sorry Ryan. They’re not protected by the single-party consent law because the actions taken are illegal, irrespective of the recording being so.
I’m blaming antihistamines, allergies, and a lack of caffeine.