Fox fires Project Veritas-affiliated reporter who declared on-air she’s being ‘muzzled’ by her bosses: report

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Fox 26 Houston reporter Ivory Hecker announced Tuesday she has been fired after announcing live on-air during an on-scene segment that her bosses had been “muzzling” her and she had given secretly recorded audio and video to the discredited far right wing activists at Project Veritas.

Fox 26 Houston reporter Ivory Hecker announced Tuesday she has been fired after announcing live on-air during an on-scene segment that her bosses had been “muzzling” her and she had given secretly recorded audio and video to the discredited far right wing activists at Project Veritas.

The Daily Beast reports that in a phone call with Hecker “she said that she had just been terminated by the Fox outlet.” Continue reading.

Twitter suspends right-wing activist James O’Keefe

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James O’Keefe, the activist best known for producing and promoting selectively edited, deceptive videos used to advance a far right wing agenda, appears to have been suspended from Twitter, and that suspension appears to be permanent.

On his verified Instagram account O’Keefe posted a screenshot of the suspension:

James O'Keefe Suspended Account
O'Keefe Instagram Post


Continue reading.

Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe crashed a private CNN teleconference. CNN says he may have broken the law.

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Over the last few years, Project Veritas has gathered evidence in an effort to prove that CNN slants its coverage to hurt President Trump. In the past, that has meant surreptitiously recording and releasing videos of unsuspecting CNN employees talking about the network’s coverage, as well as releasing leaked tapes of commentsmade by network executives and staffers in editorial meetings. Last year, the conservative group revealed that a contractor hired by CNN as a satellite uplink technician had been a primary “whistleblower” on the effort.

But on Tuesday, Project Veritas — an organization that has used deceptive tactics in some of its attempts to capture proof of what it says is liberal bias and corruption in mainstream media and government — may have crossed a line. To help promote a new cache of two months of recordings of CNN’s daily morning editorial calls, the group’s founder, James O’Keefe, filmed himself calling in to the network’s 9 a.m. meeting and pressing CNN President Jeff Zucker on the network’s journalistic integrity.

While Project Veritas had previously disseminated covert recordings of CNN’s daily meeting, in this video O’Keefe himself could be seen dialing in to a private CNN call — apparently without the knowledge or consent of participants. Continue reading.

Project Veritas video about Minneapolis ballots probably was part of a ‘coordinated disinformation campaign,’ Stanford researchers say

James O’Keefe and his group, Project Veritas, appear to have made an abrupt decision to release the video sooner than planned, according to the researchers. 

A deceptive video released Sunday by conservative activist James O’Keefe, which claimed through unidentified sources and with no verifiable evidence that Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign had collected ballots illegally, was probably part of a coordinated disinformation effort, according to researchers at Stanford University.

O’Keefe and his group, Project Veritas, appear to have made an abrupt decision to release the video sooner than planned after the New York Times published a sweeping investigation of President Donald Trump’s taxes, the researchers said. They also noted that the timing and metadata of a Twitter post in which Trump’s son shared the video suggested that he might have known about it in advance.

Project Veritas had hyped the video on social media for several days before publishing it. In posts amplified by other prominent conservative accounts, O’Keefe teased what he said was evidence of voter fraud, and urged people to sign up at “ballot-harvesting.com” to receive the supposed evidence when it came out. (None of the material in the video actually proved voter fraud.) Continue reading.

DFL Party Statement on Project Veritas Video

SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA – Ken Martin, Chairman of the Minnesota DFL Party, released the following statement in response to the video put out by Project Veritas:

“Project Veritas is a discredited, far-right propaganda outfit known for lying, entrapment, and breaking the law. At a time when President Trump is trying to use fake claims of voter fraud to subvert a free and fair election, anyone that uses completely unverified information from a right-wing propaganda group to bolster the President’s bogus claims is doing real harm to our democracy. While the Republican Party tries to subvert our democracy, the DFL Party is working hard to ensure that every eligible voter can fully and freely participate in our elections. If Representative Drazkowski or any organization has evidence of illegal activities occurring around our elections, they should immediately present that evidence to the proper authorities so they can begin a thorough investigation.”

Project Veritas and their founder, James O’Keefe, have a long history of lying, entrapment, breaking the law, and manipulating evidence in order to produce undercover videos that fit a particular narrative. 

Below are numerous examples that illustrate Project Veritas’ penchant for producing fake news.

Continue reading “DFL Party Statement on Project Veritas Video”

Florida bars Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe from fundraising due to criminal conviction

The following article by Shawn Boburg was posted on the Washington Post website December 8, 2017:

James O’Keefe, the conservative founder of a charity that specializes in undercover videos targeting journalists and liberals, has been personally barred from seeking donations in Florida due to his criminal record, officials said.

The ban is part of a wave of scrutiny by regulators in several states after New York officials threatened last week to prohibit Project Veritas from raising money in that state. The charity did not disclose O’Keefe’s 2010 conviction for entering a federal building under false pretenses, as required, New York officials said.

While Project Veritas’s deceptive techniques and splashy videos have attracted attention and acclaim from far-right activists, as well as criticism from others, its past problems with regulators have gained little notice. The charity has previously been sanctioned or denied a license to seek donations in Utah, Mississippi, Wisconsin and Maine, records show, due partly to misstatements and failures to disclose O’Keefe’s conviction for entering a U.S. senator’s office with two men who were posing as telephone repairmen to make a secret recording. Continue reading “Florida bars Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe from fundraising due to criminal conviction”

James O’Keefe, Practitioner of the Sting, Has an Ally in Trump

The following article by Kenneth P. Vogel was posted on the New York Times website December 7, 2017:

James O’Keefe discussed one of his undercover videos on the Hillary Clinton campaign in September 2015. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Days after Donald J. Trump launched his presidential campaign in June 2015, James O’Keefe, the conservative disrupter famous for trying to use secret recordings to embarrass liberals and journalists, visited Trump Tower and gave Mr. Trump a preview of his latest hidden camera video intended to undermine Hillary Clinton.

The footage, widely dismissed after it was released some weeks later, showed officials from Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign appearing to accept a payment for campaign swag from a Canadian woman at a Clinton campaign rally — in violation, Mr. O’Keefe contended, of election laws barring campaign contributions from foreigners. Continue reading “James O’Keefe, Practitioner of the Sting, Has an Ally in Trump”

Meet the people bankrolling James O’Keefe’s group

The following article by Josh Israel and Joshua Eaton was posted on the ThinkProgress website November 29, 2017:

James O’Keefe, in 2015. Credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

For the past seven years, conservative operative and convicted criminal James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas have used a mix of selective editing and guerilla filmmaking in a mostly unsuccessful series of attempts to discredit political opponents.

On Monday, their latest “sting” operation exploded in their face when The Washington Post caught on to an operative’s false claims of statutory rape, designed to discredit those actually coming forward with stories of sexual assault and to undermine the paper itself. Continue reading “Meet the people bankrolling James O’Keefe’s group”

James O’Keefe tweeted about his ‘confrontation’ with a Post reporter. Here’s what really happened.

The following article Marwa Eltagouri was posted on the Washington Post website November 28, 2017:

After Project Veritas publishes highly edited account of Post reporter and James O’Keefe exchange, here’s what really happened. (Dalton Bennett/The Washington Post)

The Washington Post on Monday published a report about a woman who falsely claimed Roy Moore sexually assaulted her as a teenager — and who appeared to work with Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics and secretly recorded conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets.

Shortly after the investigation was published, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe tweeted a video of what he called his “confrontation” with one of the authors of The Post investigation, Aaron C. Davis. The video was heavily edited, a tactic for which Project Veritas has drawn criticism. Continue reading “James O’Keefe tweeted about his ‘confrontation’ with a Post reporter. Here’s what really happened.”