Conservative activist James O’Keefe was unceremoniously eliminated in 2023 as the top of Mission Veritas, the far-right activist group that he based, and now he desires everybody to know that individuals within the group had been imply to him.
The Bulwark’s Will Sommer reported on Tuesday that O’Keefe is promoting a video referred to as “The Truth Inside Veritas” purporting to inform the “chaotic power struggle that consumed Project Veritas from within.”
After watching the video, Sommer notes that O’Keefe “devotes a surprisingly large amount of the video to demonstrating how rude his employees were to him.”
This contains detailing the content material of imply texts that had been despatched to him, together with a Photoshopped image changing O’Keefe’s face with a intercourse toy. In one other occasion, O’Keefe whines that an worker despatched out “a text message of me eating a sandwich covered in semen.”
O’Keefe’s obvious objective is to revive himself as the top of Mission Veritas so he can as soon as once more produce absurd far-right propaganda.
O’Keefe is an unsympathetic determine who has spent greater than fifteen years in right-wing political activism focusing on liberals and the Democratic Occasion, notably by smearing and distorting left-aligned teams just like the Affiliation of Neighborhood Organizations for Reform Now, which assisted poor Black individuals.
In 2023, the Mission Veritas board pushed him out of his function as CEO, which got here as allegations of economic misconduct and different odd habits surfaced. As an example, O’Keefe reportedly used greater than $20,000 of donor cash to placed on an out of doors manufacturing of the musical “Oklahoma!” during which he starred.
Regardless of his unusual habits—or maybe due to it—O’Keefe isn’t a fringe determine on the suitable, and he has connections to among the strongest individuals in Republican politics.
In 2016, it was revealed that the nonprofit Trump Basis paid O’Keefe $10,000. Throughout that very same marketing campaign cycle, Mission Veritas launched movies attacking presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
And in 2021, as he ready to launch his in the end unsuccessful presidential run, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis featured O’Keefe on the signing of a invoice purporting to stop censorship of right-wing views on social media.
An indicator of O’Keefe’s work is deceptively edited movies purporting to point out individuals on the left within the worst gentle potential. O’Keefe, who was an apprentice of the now-deceased right-wing smear artist Andrew Breitbart, has surfaced time and again with movies claiming to point out malfeasance on the left, which continuously dissolves after the faintest trace of scrutiny.
O’Keefe’s drive to assault the left even led to a run-in with the legislation. In 2010, he was arrested whereas making an attempt to achieve entry to the cellphone strains of former Sen. Mary Ladrieu, Democrat of Louisiana. O’Keefe later pleaded responsible to misdemeanor fees and was sentenced to probation and group service.
And at different occasions, O’Keefe’s actions simply led to nationwide embarrassment and humiliation. The identical 12 months as his arrest, O’Keefe reportedly tried to lure CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau onto a ship strewn with intercourse toys and pornography in an try and seduce her.
O’Keefe is a clown who likes to play dress-up whereas dishonestly attacking the left. His antics led to his downfall and ouster, however he clearly desires to proceed to be a participant in conservative circles.
However regardless of his cringe-inducing habits, O’Keefe has all the time had a stable following, and the suitable selected to embrace his deceptions and mediocre work. So his bid to be related as soon as once more does stand an opportunity of succeeding.
He’s exactly the form of whack job the conservative motion depends on time and again.
