James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American political activist who founded Project Veritas, a far-right activistActivist... group that has used deceptively edited videos and information gathering techniques to attack mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Both O'Keefe and Project Veritas have produced secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations; the recordings are often selectively edited to misrepresent the context of the conversations and the subjects' responses. O'Keefe served as chairman until he was fired from the organization in February 2023.
O'Keefe first gained national attention for his selectively edited video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and misdemeanor guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of misleading videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011.
When his videos – heavily edited to portray ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning – were publicized, the U.S. Congress voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices. Shortly thereafter, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately. One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement.
O'Keefe has gained support from right-wing and conservative media and interest groups, as well as from the far right. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment.
The Project Veritas board removed O'Keefe from leadership positions in February 2023 for what it said was financial malfeasance with donor money. On March 15, 2023, O'Keefe launched a new organization called O'Keefe Media Group. Project Veritas subsequently sued O'Keefe and two others, alleging that they had created the competing O'Keefe Media Group while still employees, approaching PV's donors and using company funds for this purpose. O'Keefe was also alleged to have improperly spent company funds on himself.
Early life and education James Edward O'Keefe III was born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the elder of two children of James, a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. He has a younger sister.
O'Keefe grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so", according to his father. He graduated from Westwood Regional High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He attained Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy. Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from The Leadership Institute.
For his first video, he and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms. They expected to be thrown out of school, but the Rutgers official was courteous, took notes, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu.
Career After graduating from Rutgers, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia, under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe calls his mentor. The institute sent him to colleges to train students to start conservative independent newspapers, but, after a year LI officials asked him to leave. According to LI president and founder Morton Blackwell, O'Keefe was "very effective and very enthusiastic" but after a year he was asked to leave because officials felt his activist work threatened the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation.
O'Keefe has produced and distributed secretly recorded and misleadingly edited videos and audio files made during staged encounters with targeted entities or individuals. His work takes the form of undercover stings targeted at liberal groups and politicians. He sought to "embarrass" and "damage" his targets, such as Landrieu and ACORN.
He has sought to maximize publicity by releasing secretly recorded videos over several days or months, often in relation to funding authorizations or significant political actions related to the subject organization. Many videos received widespread media coverage sparking significant reactions, most notably videos of ACORN that resulted in the Congress quickly freezing funds, two executive agencies canceling contracts, and several ACORN workers being fired, and videos of National Public Radio (NPR) executives that led to the resignation of CEO Vivian Schiller, shortly before Congressional funding hearings involving NPR.
In January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Breitbarts website, BigGovernment. Andrew Breitbart stated in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights" to gain release of O'Keefe's videos first on his website. In 2010, O'Keefe formed a new organization, Project Veritas, whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society."
Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from anonymous donations through Donors Trust, a conservative, American nonprofit donor-advised fund, which according to its promotional materials, says that it will "keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues." Prominent donors include the Trump Foundation, which, in May 2015, donated $10,000.
O'Keefe is a conservative activist with mainstream conservative pro-market and anti-government views, although he has described himself as a "progressive radical", because he wants to change things, "not conserve them". He considers himself a muckraker. O'Keefe has expressed admiration for the philosophy of G. K. Chesterton and for a free press.
Major activities Planned Parenthood recordings (2008)
In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, the founder of an anti-abortion group on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, in which Rose posed as a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male. Rose and O'Keefe made two videos incorporating heavily edited versions of the recordings and released them on YouTube. the video omitted the portions of the full conversation in which a Planned Parenthood employee asked Rose to consult her mother about the pregnancy and another employee told Rose, "We have to follow the laws". Rose took down the videos after Planned Parenthood sent her a cease and desist letter in May 2007 asserting that the videos violated California's voice recording laws, which required consent from all recorded parties.
In 2007, O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women, accompanied by race-related remarks such as "there's way too many black people in Ohio". The recordings portrayed Planned Parenthood clinic workers in six states agreeing to accept his donation under his conditions. After the release of the recordings, African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization. The Idaho clinic responded with an apology for "the manner in which this offensive call was handled". Planned Parenthood issued an official statement emphasizing that "97 percent of its services are focused on providing contraceptives, breast and cervical cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment — not abortions".
ACORN videos (2009)
In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for people of low and moderate income.
Washington Post correspondents Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives" and that "[p]oliticians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." According to The Washington Post, ACORN registered people mostly from the Latino and African American groups.
The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009According to the California Attorney General's investigation report, p. 8, the recordings occurred in ACORN offices in eight cities: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Brooklyn, Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Bernardino. and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). ACORN employees at two of the six offices visited by O'Keefe and Giles reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees,Public Sociology, Philip Nyden, Leslie Hossfeld, Gwendolyn Nyden. SAGE Publications, 2011 and distorted the chronology of events. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work.
Reception and lawsuit After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN. The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN. By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published which cleared the organization of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources.
On March 1, 2010, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes found there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York.