James O'Keefe is Out at Project Veritas?

Will Project Veritas be able to survive his ouster/leaving?

The story of James O’Keefe’s ouster at Project Veritas is an odd one. They claimed a few days back that he was never removed when news broke of his alleged removal and today a video was released of O’Keefe talking “to staff members”.

It seems odd that he recorded a video claiming time and again, while looking into the camera, that it was for “internal use only”.

That doesn’t pass the smell test coming from a dude who made his name releasing secret videos. He might as well have winked at the camera while claiming “this is for internal purposes only”. Right James, sure it is.

In the 45 minute video O’Keefe attempts to rebut some of the claims levied against him, mentions some receipts and tea from within the company and repeats that he was removed as CEO & stripped of pay.

At the 7:35 mark O’Keefe claims he was stripped of his seat on the board and as CEO. He then quotes the Board meeting minutes saying;

“Quote, James O’Keefe is indefinitely suspended as CEO without compensation. February 10th.”

Then;

“Quote, indefinite suspension of James O’Keefe from the Board, dated February 10th, five days before the statement saying I’m still the CEO.”

He immediately followed that up with “I don’t know why this is happening” but my bullshit detector went off because there was a screenshot of the document which was edited into this video (as were other items). This is supposed to just be an internal video but we’re seeing documents being edited in for reference. Hmm.

Sounds like to basic PR to me.

I’d let that go but there’s some fundamental context missing. I noticed that the highlighted sentences in the documents in question had more words than O’Keefe read aloud so I pulled out my trusty CSI “Zoom and Enhance” tool.

The first quote from the minutes when read in full says (emphasis added);

“Indefinite suspension of Mr. O’Keefe as CEO without compensation pending the results of the two-dimensional audit".”

And the second one omits the exact same point about the audit (emphasis added);

“Indefinite suspension of James O’Keefe from the Board pending the results of the two-dimensional audit.”

That sounds an awful lot like being put on unpaid leave and doesn’t necessarily contradict the statement from the Project Veritas Board member stating O’Keefe wasn’t fired or removed, at least not at that point.

A “suspension” from a board isn’t the same legal thing as a “removal” so O’Keefe is playing some semantic games here to tell a story.

For a man that claims he “only reports the facts”, that’s a pretty damning fact to omit and it seems odd to intentionally cut those specific 8 words, twice, in a video not cut for time. If he can wax poetic about how people have described him or what it means to be a leader, both of which he did, he can read the actual minutes of the meeting for context.

It continues to be odd how this was written and delivered when we’re constantly reminded that it’s supposed to be for internal use only. Constantly. O’Keefe talks about a Board member who disagreed with him and whom he fired but surely everybody at Project Veritas knows the story. Why isn’t he name-checking the fired parties to his own now-former staff? It’s not like that news hasn’t been on Twitter for 2 weeks and hasn’t been water cooler talk around Project Veritas.

This entire thing is written with a wink and a nod to the audience, knowing full well that it would be released to the public for dramatic effect.

An example given by O’Keefe to show how he was done dirty that many have jumped on is that a Board member scheduled a meeting to remove O’Keefe and restructure the Board and that meeting was scheduled for when his plane landed in Nashville.

That sounds duplicitous, doesn’t it? Trying to fire O’Keefe while he’s out of town and making plans while he’s in the air?

Well hold on. This only happened after O’Keefe, by his own admission, fired a member of the Board (that the Board claims was illegal) the same day.

Was the Board supposed to sit on his actions until he was available? Why didn’t he take the firing of a Board member TO the Board in the first place?

Who’s telling the truth all depends on what’s in the bylaws which neither side is publicly posting or linking to so it’s he-said/they-said at this point.

Weirdly Project Veritas isn’t exactly doing themselves any favors with the “damning” list of nonsense that led to O’Keefe’s administrative leave.

The first item seems a little concerning, as $14K on a charter flight under false pretenses could be theft. Some receipts would be nice.

The next item, however, goes off the rails. The Project Veritas Experience was not only over a year ago but clearly was highly organized and planned by many hands. According to Rolling Stone at the time, that event was at least $125 for general admission and it, at worst, looks like bad PR for the Project Veritas sponsored support of O’Keefe’s book “American Muckraker”. The writer for that Rolling Stone piece even says he was handed a card from a member of Project Veritas’ legal team upon arrival.

Considering Project Veritas brought somewhere near $22,000,000 the prior year in fundraising it seems a little odd to quibble that *some* of their fundraising and PR lost them $60,000 especially when the legal team (at least according to Rolling Stone) clearly signed off on the event.

The $150,000 on “Blacks Cars” is weird as well. What does that even mean? Are they referring to Uber Black or a specific type of hired car? Did this violate any terms? Would it have been okay if they were “White Cars” or “Cars of Mixed Color”? What if he had spent $150K on Uber Pool? What’s the actual complaint here? It doesn’t even claim that O’Keefe is the only person using these nefarious “Black Cars”.

This is such an unspecific claim as to be totally useless.

The lack of receipts and evidence with the DJ item (like the charter flight) makes me skeptical of all of these claims but the “hundreds of other acts of personal inurement” seals the deal.

Hundreds? Really? Over what time frame? Totaling what?

Even I believe that those “hundreds” of examples exist, you want us to believe that you all just missed it all until recently?

If this is the best the Project Veritas board can muster to defend their actions it seems sketchy as hell.

I’m inclined to believe that all they wanted was to force a power play with O’Keefe, probably a demotion, and he did what O’Keefe does and made a video and ruined their day.

It’s particularly damning that they indefinitely suspended O’Keefe (on 15 Feb) and then tried to play it off like everything was fine. This isn’t uncommon in damage control but it’s damning if it comes out - and again, this is an outfit that makes it’s bones outing secret communications so they should have seen this coming.

The Board did, according to a document posted in this video, deny O’Keefe’s ability to access proprietary information including the donor list, took away his company credit card, placed him on a two-week paid leave, and removed his ability to hire/fire people for 180 days.

That sounds bad.

It also sounds like pretty common stuff if you’re investigating somebody for malfeasance, especially related to money.

Supercuts won’t let you have access to the client list of the people you cut the hair of in their salons in case you leave, this type of stuff is super common. If Project Veritas was worried O’Keefe would be fired (or bail as he appears to be doing now), they’d be stupid to not restrict his access to the donor list. The first thing he’d be likely to do is to send out an email blast telling them all to drop their donations to Project Veritas and come to whatever he’s doing next. Building a new list of donors is difficult, just ask Steven Crowder after The Blaze kept the list of his paid subscribers.

O’Keefe went on to tell his now-former staffers to request the entirety of an approximately 7 hour video from the board - which might be legally under an NDA or other legal protection - and he offers just enough in the form of evidence to make himself look like he’s being entirely wronged.

At the around the 27 minute mark O’Keefe talks about how he “went off the grid” and “found it odd” that people were trying to contact him when the news broke because;

“There was a corporate resolution demanding I be gone for two weeks. I was a little worried about violating the corporate resolution, wouldn’t you?”

Except the “corporate resolution” was that he was put on paid leave for 2 weeks, not that he “go off grid” or not be reachable.

I’m a big believer in turning my phone off when I’m not at work and can sympathize with wanting to go as far away as possible when being told to leave the way he was - but his telling here is for dramatic effect - not simply to explain.

Nobody really believes that a CEO, boss, or owner is ever REALLY unreachable. Especially not in dire PR nightmares that they know about and are monitoring.

O’Keefe also spent some time “asking questions” related to why this is all happening currently and he offers no answers knowing full well the implication of what he’s saying.

The rumor mill has been abuzz for weeks about the Board being in the pocket of Pfizer and he puts this chain of events in the context of happening right after the Pfizer story broke. He’s connecting dots and then pretending to just be “asking questions” hoping the audience will just fill in the obvious blanks - which many have online.

No evidence of these implications, as of yet, has been forthcoming. Just askin’ questions guys.

He finally demanded that the Board resign or else he’d be forced to walk away, saying if the board didn’t step down, he’d leave. This isn’t totally unreasonable if you take his word that he has no paycheck and no official duties with the company indefinitely, otherwise it becomes a little suspect.

However, this is a claim that isn’t refuted at all in the official Project Veritas rebuttal which itself is quite telling from their side.

Regardless, they called his bluff and so he apparently packed his stuff and left without ever actually saying that he quit. The claim was;

“I’m packing up my personal belongings from headquarters and intending to start anew”.

There’s a lot of wiggle room in that word “intending” and most competent journalists I know choose their words carefully. Especially in pre-written comments clearly intended for wide video dispersal.

Frankly it sounds like everybody in this Project Veritas drama is covering their own asses to some degree and nobody is really telling the whole truth.

I’m curious to see O’Keefe respond to the official Project Veritas statement, and hopefully in a little more straightforward, less bullshitty way.

I suppose we’ll see what actually shakes out in the next few weeks. This might just blow over and go nowhere the same way the The Daily Wire / Steven Crowder kerfuffle simply vanished or we might be seeing some new venture headed by O’Keefe popping up any day now.

Time will tell and, sadly, the speculation will be exhausting until then.