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Person

James O’Keefe

Nationality:

American
Born:

June 8, 1984
Occupation(s):

Founder, Project Veritas

Founder, O’Keefe Media Group

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James O’Keefe is a right-of-center activist videographer and the founder and former president of Project Veritas and Project Veritas Action. 1 After parting with Project Veritas over alleged financial mismanagement and bad treatment of employees in 2023, he established O’Keefe Media Group. 2

O’Keefe’s investigations have included undercover-video stings targeting ACORN, National Public Radio (NPR), Planned Parenthood, Enroll America, Battleground Texas, Medicaid, Hollywood environmentalists, Al Sharpton, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. 1

Early Life and Career

James O’Keefe was born in 1984 in Bergen County, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers University in 2006. 2 At Rutgers he recorded his first sting video as a prank on a college official by pretending to complain the Lucky Charms leprechaun mascot was offensive to Irish people. 2

After college, he went to work with pro-life activist Lila Rose. He conducted a sting operation against Planned Parenthood. 2

O’Keefe and Hannah Giles conducted a video sting operation on six offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). The videos seemed to show ACORN staff approved of prostitution and trafficking of underage girls. Andrew Breitbart published the videos on his website, BigGovernment.com. This led to bipartisan action in U.S. Congress to stop federal funding of ACORN. 2

Working for Breitbart, O’Keefe attempted a sting operation aimed at then-U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and dressed up friends as telephone repairmen to film at her office. This led to O’Keefe briefly going to a New Orleans jail after being charged with phone tampering. The court eventually reduced the charges to unlawfully entering federal property. He pleaded guilty to the reduced charges, and until 2013, he was not allowed to leave the state of New Jersey without permission. 2

Project Veritas

Activities

O’Keefe recruited volunteers across the country to do sting operations to be broadcast through his nonprofit news outlet Project Veritas, which he incorporated in Virginia as a charitable nonprofit in 2010. 2

O’Keefe founded and initially ran Project Veritas from his father’s garage in suburban New York. 3 By 2012, he put himself and one other person on the payroll, while the rest were volunteers. However, by the end of 2021, Project Veritas had 59 employees on the payroll. 2

Forbes reported that Project Veritas paid O’Keefe $1.9 million from 2012 to 2019, citing disclosure reports with New York state. His salary grew as the organization’s donations grew. In 2012, he earned $56,000. In 2019, his salary was $396,429. 4

O’Keefe is the author of Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy and American Pravda. 1 2

Though a conservative, O’Keefe has pointed to the far-left Saul Alinsky’s handbook Rules for Radicals as a guide for a revolutionary approach to journalism. He said Project Veritas focused on Rule Four: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”; Rule Five: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”; and Rule 13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” 2

In 2011, a Project Veritas video sting caught National Public Radio executives meeting with two people who professed to be from the Muslim Education Action Center, which is not a real organization and which the operatives conducting the sting falsely claimed was funded by the Muslim Brotherhood. The NPR executives were interested in getting a $5 million donation, and one attacked the Tea Party and seemed to admit NPR had an anti-Israel bias. After the video was shown, one of the NPR executives resigned and the other was placed on administrative leave. However, the two Project Veritas operatives who did the sting operation complained the video was posted too early and their cover was blown before the mission was complete to demonstrate how radical Islamist groups could influence American institutions such as universities and media organizations. 2

O’Keefe wrote in his book American Pravda that he first met Donald Trump in 2013 at Trump Tower. Trump asked him to obtain then-President Barack Obama’s admission records from Columbia University. Trump said he heard rumors the records at Columbia listed Obama’s birthplace as Kenya. O’Keefe declined, and wrote that he told Trump, “We were journalists, not private eyes.” Before they parted, Trump whispered, “Do Columbia.” Trump’s foundation donated $10,000 to Project Veritas one month before he announced his 2016 presidential campaign.2

Project Veritas paid two Floridians $40,000 for several items including the diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley. In a staff email, O’Keefe said it would be “indefensible” to publish contents of the diary. In November 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided O’Keefe’s home and the homes of two other Project Veritas employees. The FBI had subpoenaed Google, Microsoft, and Apple for emails and browsing data for several employees starting in November 2020, which expanded beyond the scope of the diary. The American Civil Liberties Union, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Freedom of the Press Foundation condemned the raids. 2

In January 2023, O’Keefe claimed Project Veritas’ most successful video was footage of a Pfizer executive appearing to admit the company purposefully mutates Covid-19 in the name of developing new vaccines. It had 30 million impressions on X, and was viewed by 800,000 on YouTube. 2

Questionable Expenses

Rolling Stone reported that a Project Veritas financial audit released in spring of 2023 found that from 2021 through 2023, James O’Keefe spent $209,000 in company funds on chauffeured “black car” services. He also belonged to a yacht club and hosted company events there to meet the club’s spending requirements. 2

O’Keefe placed a deposit on a wedding venue, but after the engagement broke up, he held a Project Veritas Christmas party at the venue so he could charge it to the company, according to the audit. The audit also reportedly said O’Keefe chartered a $12,000 helicopter on the company’s dime, and a $1,400 black car for personal use. O’Keefe countered that the trips were for meeting donors. 2

The Project Veritas board said that questionable financial issues also included O’Keefe spending “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor”; $60,000 in losses from dance events; and more than $150,000 “in Black Cars in the last 18 months.” 5

After O’Keefe fired top executives in February 2023, about 25 Veritas employees formed a “revolutionaries” group chat and compiled a list of office dysfunctions for the board of directors of Project Veritas that detailed an allegedly toxic work environment. 2

The board voted 3 to 2 to remove O’Keefe as chairman, indefinitely suspend him as CEO, and offered him mental-health services. 2

The Westchester County District Attorney’s office confirmed it was investigating O’Keefe shortly after his ouster, but it did not confirm the reason. O’Keefe’s lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman blamed the investigation on “disgruntled former employees of Project Veritas who had a problem with their CEO using too many car services to pay for fundraising efforts which paid their salaries.” 6

O’Keefe Media Group

James O’Keefe started O’Keefe Media Group, or OMG, in March 2023. Rolling Stone reported that O’Keefe allegedly contacted donors using Project Veritas’s fundraising list that the board said it had barred him from using upon his suspension. Project Veritas sued O’Keefe for breach of contract. Several Project Veritas employees left to join OMG. 2

Several commentators associated with the political right, such as Tim Pool, Jack Posobiec, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump Jr., Dan Bongino, Mike Cernovich, Catturd, and Alex Jones, continued to support O’Keefe. 2

Before the 2024 election, O’Keefe recruited election workers and poll monitors to secretly film voting and ballot counting, with the intent of sharing the recordings to expose election fraud. About 70 people signed up for the effort by mid-October, the New York Times reported. Some states prohibit filming at election sites. O’Keefe acknowledged a legal risk for the election workers, but said, “it is legal for me to publish what you send me so long as I ‘play no part’ in the recording.” He said this was “fully legal” and told volunteers to follow the law. 7

Maricopa County attorney Rachel Mitchell (R) sent a letter to O’Keefe warning him that “If you were to send a poll worker a hidden camera to record audiovisual in a voting location, you might be guilty of conspiracy to violate Arizona law.” 8

In February 2024, O’Keefe and his former organization Project Veritas settled a lawsuit filed by an Erie, Pennsylvania, postmaster. Project Veritas aired video of a mail carrier and accused the postmaster of seeking to commit election fraud. O’Keefe said in a statement after the agreement was reached that he was “aware of no evidence or other allegation that election fraud occurred in the Erie Post Office during the 2020 Presidential Election.” 9

References

  1. James O’Keefe.” Young America’s Foundation. Accessed November 15, 2024. https://yaf.org/people/james-okeefe/
  2. Jedeed, Laura. “Inside the Rise and Fall of Project Veritas.” Rolling Stone. June 20, 2024. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/project-veritas-james-okeefe-rise-fall-1235036748/
  3. Schmidt, Michael S. and Farenthold, David A. “James O’Keefe Leaves His Post as the Leader of Project Veritas.” New York Times. February 20, 2023. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/us/politics/james-okeefe-project-veritas.html
  4.   Everson, Zach. “James O’Keefe Has Earned At Least $1.9 Million Helming Project Veritas.” Forbes. November 11, 2021. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2021/11/11/james-okeefe-has-earned-at-least-19-million-helming-project-veritas/
  5. Associated Press. “Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe is forced out at the right-wing group.” National Public Radio. February 21, 2023. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158505780/project-veritas-james-okeefe-forced-out-financial-malfeasance
  6. Sisak, Michael. “Fired founder of right-wing org Project Veritas is under investigation in New York.” Associated Press. August 18, 2023. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/james-okeefe-project-veritas-westchester-investigation-9ba0592a335c00c8579c0e33a4968fc9
  7. Bensinger, Ken. “James O’Keefe Recruits Election Workers to Secretly Record at the Polls.” New York Times. November 3, 2024. Accessed November 15, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/03/us/politics/2024-election-james-okeefe-voting.html
  8. Kaloi, Stephanie. “James O’Keefe Gets Warned Not to Place Hidden Cameras at Arizona Polls: ‘You Might Be Guilty of Conspiracy.’” November 2, 2024. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.yahoo.com/news/james-o-keefe-gets-warned-223231619.html?guccounter=1
  9. Reilly, Ryan. “James O’Keefe and Project Veritas settle suit over bogus voter fraud claims cited by the Trump campaign.” NBC News. February 5, 2024. Accessed November 16, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/james-okeefe-project-veritas-settle-suit-bogus-voter-fraud-claims-cite-rcna137366
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