Exit Stage Left

Wednesday, October 12, 2016 was the worst day of my life.

I woke up to dozens of death threats on social media and had to immediately lock my Twitter profile. I was called into the office and immediately had to listen to a statewide call where my actions were being discussed. I had to be interviewed by a third-party investigator. Despite having done nothing wrong, I offered my resignation to avoid any potential blowback for the campaign by creating ammunition for our opponents. I was not permitted to work out of the office and had to be whisked away to a secure off-site location. I could not contact any of my volunteer team. News outlets were starting to pick up on the story. My name was all over right-wing websites. I was already becoming an internet meme. I went to sleep that night after a hellacious 14 hours firmly believing that I had cost my candidate the election. 

All thanks to one man: James O'Keefe, III.

I wish that nobody would ever have to endure what I did. The uncertainty of it all. The feeling of being manipulated. The paranoid wondering if I was being watched or followed. Nobody should ever have to ever experience this. Yet because of O'Keefe and his organization Project Veritas, countless others have been in my exact situation. Countless others have had their lives turned upside down as a result of O'Keefe and his organization's actions. Nonprofit employees. Teachers. Union workers. Medical professionals. O'Keefe's monomaniacal quest has targeted countless kind and good-hearted individuals whose only crime has been to want to make the world a better place. But that didn't matter to O'Keefe. The only thing that mattered to him was that these individuals served a singular purpose for him: 

They could be manipulated. 

This has been the core theme of the work of O'Keefe's nonprofit, Project Veritas, over the past 13 years. Manipulation. O'Keefe and his team of undercover "journalists" have manipulated videos and recordings to paint a picture of misconduct when, in fact, none exists. O'Keefe's targets read like a laundry list of Democrats and Democratic-leaning organizations: ACORN, Louisiana Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu, the Florida Democratic Party, the United Teachers of Wichita. Hell, O'Keefe even went so far as to try and discredit the Roy Moore accusations by having one of his journalists try and pose as a fake rape victim to the Washington Post. In each instance, O'Keefe's undercover agents lied about their identify and tried to get the person on video to respond to certain situations, many of them hypothetical. Of course, when the final, heavily manipulated videos came out, the person in question was made to seem as if he or she supported or at least would turn a blind eye to the situation in question. That was all O'Keefe needed: the perception of wrongdoing. That's all he needed to fuel the ring-wing outrage machine.

Myself and others were simply a means to an end. Our lives were thrown into chaos but O'Keefe didn't care. The more outraged his supporters were, the more likely they would donate to Project Veritas. As CEO, O'Keefe was becoming a multimillionaire, something that simply shouldn't happen as someone in charge of a 501(c)3 nonprofit. He published two books chronicling his journalists' "findings" and was a keynote speaker at events like CPAC. Of course, he also received funds in some more dubious ways. Project Veritas received $20,000 worth of contributions from the Trump Foundation in 2015 and received $558,000 in PPP loans in 2020. Even after Hurricane Ida flooded the organization's Mamaroneck, New York headquarters in September of 2021, Project Veritas miraculously raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to repair their office without missing a beat. It was an outrageously quick recovery that would have set every other nonprofit that size back weeks, if not months.

Yet all was apparently not as well as it seemed in Project Veritas land. From our friends at NPR: 

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe said in a speech posted online Monday that he has been removed as the right-wing group's leader.

In remarks that appeared to have been made at a Project Veritas' office, O'Keefe said the board had stripped him of all decision-making. The move comes after the board reportedly put him on leave from his role as chairman amid complaints about his treatment of staff at the organization, which is known for using hidden cameras and hiding identities to try to ensnare journalists in embarrassing conversations and to reveal supposed liberal bias.

"So currently, I have no job at Project Veritas," O'Keefe said in the video. "I have no position here based upon what the board has done. So I'm announcing to you all that today on President's Day, I'm packing up my personal belongings."

So I guess that Monday was the worst day of O'Keefe's life, then? 

Well James, welcome to the world you have created. Your chickens have come home to roost. After ruining countless innocent lives over the past 13 years, you're now on the receiving end of being removed from a position because of your own personal politics. Yes, James. While Project Veritas has continued its mission of ruining as many left-wing lives as possible it's now your very own Board that has chosen to reject you because your own political leanings no longer align with the organization. It's easy to pick on teachers, campaign workers, and nonprofit workers but it's a bit different when you come toe-to-toe against wealthy Republican donors who sit on your Board. As easy as it is for you to manipulate unwilling people who oppose you ideologically, it's a lot harder to manipulate those who know your true colors and who know that manipulation has always been your own personal means to an end.

What's ironic is that James O'Keefe was able to skirt the law for well over a decade. Other than receiving a fine and probation for trespassing at Senator Mary Landrieu's office and having to pay six figures for a losing verdict after trying to infiltrate Democracy Partners in 2016, Project Veritas has avoided any significant legal consequences. Even when news hit in 2021 that Project Veritas had paid $40,000 to purchase a stolen diary from Ashley Biden, the organization still managed to avoid any serious legal repercussions. Of course, it didn't hurt that that 2021 was the organization's most successful year to date, raising roughly $21 million dollars for the fiscal year. When your organization is profitable, that solves a lot of problems. But when it's your "nonprofit" that is making over $20 million a year, that's when problems arise. 

Over the past 18 months, there has been internal strife at Project Veritas. Surprisingly, an organization being at the height of its powers has suddenly been overtaken by an internal power struggle. At the center of that power struggle was O'Keefe, who tried to make light of Project Veritas' removal from Twitter by creating a parody music video using company resources, something that rubbed many staff the wrong way. With the looming Ashley Biden issue hovering on their heads, there was suddenly an air of tension in Project Veritas' normally relaxed Mamaroneck office. O'Keefe's usual antics were starting to wear on the organizations 60+ employees. Much of this internal strife was outlined in an internal memo that brought to light just how awkward the working environment at Project Veritas had become. From a Rolling Stone article:

In the memo acquired by The Daily Beast, employees wrote that working for O’Keefe at Project Veritas could mean being “publicly humiliated” by the founder and “public crucifixions.” Employees also claimed that staff could even be required to undergo lie detector tests, that O’Keefe was a “power drunk tyrant” (according to one complaint), and that the chairman once took a sandwich from a pregnant woman because he was hungry.

“I was yelled at in front of jurors because he was hungry and then he took the 8-month pregnant woman’s sandwich,” the account by an employee alleged, detailing an incident during a Sept. 2022 trial against a Democratic consulting firm that O’Keefe ultimately lost.

In the memo, employees also brought up the use of Project Veritas money to boost O’Keefe’s own theatrical interests. In December, Project Veritas said it provided a prohibited $20,500 in “excess benefits” to O’Keefe last year to pay for staff to accompany him to Virginia when he starred in a 2021 production of “Oklahoma!”

While all of this may have one time been perfectly par for the course, having everyone on pins and needles and still having to deal with O'Keefe's ongoing shenanigans was simply too much to handle. O'Keefe was placed on paid leave on February 8th and resigned less than 2 weeks later. Even in his final moments, O'Keefe insisted that he was the victim and that he was being "forced out" of the organization he helped found. In typical fashion, O'Keefe then went on a tirade against his perceived enemies citing an alleged internal email that offered Board members a sum of money to oust him from his position. For someone who had built his entire career on slandering others, it was a fitting end for him to go down swinging with wild, unverified accusations. James O'Keefe, the proud heir of Andrew Breitbart, simply couldn't help himself and couldn't accept the fact that his ego had caused him to lose the very organization that brought him so much fame and good fortune. He couldn't admit that it was he who was the problem and that his antics were no longer welcome. And he couldn't admit that he wasn't as universally loved as he imagined himself to be. 

In the wake of O'Keefe's scorched earth resignation, Project Veritas has already lost over 100,000 followers on Twitter. The right-wing echo chamber is united in its support for him. Monthly donors are already withdrawing their donations. Because for them, James O'Keefe is Project Veritas. The dozens of countless "journalists" that O'Keefe uses to do his dirty work aren't important. It is O'Keefe who is the visible head of the organization. It is O'Keefe who gets the invites to CPAC. It is O'Keefe who gets personal shout outs from Donald Trump for the organization's work. It was never Project Veritas allegedly exposing all this corruption, it was all James O'Keefe. One man. One man who had become bigger than the organization and the mission upon which it was founded.

Needless to say, I won't weep for James O'Keefe and Project Veritas. Nobody should. He deserves this and so much more for all the pain and suffering he has caused. Sadly, this won't be the end of him. He'll be back with his cult. But he will never again have Project Veritas. He won't have a system in place that somehow shields his personal nonprofit with a $21 million annual budget. He won't have access to an army of gullible "journalists" willing to go undercover at a moment's notice. He won't have a network of donors who can easily raise six-figures for hurricane relief. He'll lack the critical infrastructure that helped him achieve cult status over these past 13 years. February 20, 2023 will be a day that will forever change James O'Keefe and his life trajectory. 

And it couldn't have happened to a worse human being.