James O'Keefe Responds After Being 'Removed' by Project Veritas Board
James O'Keefe — the infamous exposer of liberal wrongs who founded Project Veritas in 2010 and developed the organization into a fearsome specter to mainstream media, progressive organizations, and Democrat politicians — announced on Monday that he had been "removed" by his organization's board and has "no position here based upon what the board has done."
In somewhat the same manner as many of his legendary narrative-shattering exposés, O'Keefe read resignation remarks on-camera as he explained his side of the fraught situation to some Project Veritas staff in the organization's offices. That video (embedded in full below) was subsequently posted and picked up by others online.
"Journalism is reporting things powerful people want kept hidden for the wrong reasons — moral wrongs, bad behaviors — as journalists, we're custodians of the public's conscience," O'Keefe said reading from prepared remarks in which he explained he "was stripped of all decision-making last week" and subsequently "stripped" of his "authority as CEO and removed from the board of directors."
So, O'Keefe explained, "on President’s Day, I’m packing up my personal belongings here" as he recounted highs and lows from his career since he founded Project Veritas. From the ACORN exposé to being raided and arrested, to Planned Parenthood and most recently Pfizer, O'Keefe recalled the organization's storied past before responding to some of what's been said by the board of Project Veritas — both in private and in public.
"Leadership has a price and results often come at a human cost," O'Keefe noted. "Many people want the fruits of leadership such as its power, results, Twitter followings, secondary effects — but the price of the responsibilities, burdens trials, hardships, difficult decisions, or just sheer suffering, I don't think people want that."
"All through the years, things fundamentally continued on an upward trajectory for this place," O'Keefe said of the organization he founded and led for more than a dozen years. But then something changed in the last three weeks. "The only thing that has changed is we broke the biggest story in our organization's history," he said of the recent Project Veritas exposé of Pfizer. With more than 50 million views, "our video became a global phenomenon," O'Keefe noted.
"And then suddenly, an unusual emergency happened just a few days after that," O'Keefe said before outlining his timeline of how things unfolded.
There's even more details in the full video starting around the 15:00 mark. Screenshots of alleged text messages, emails flying between Project Veritas board members, and more information paint a picture of a different timeline of events than the board relayed in its statements.
Among the developments recounted by O'Keefe that came in a series of board meetings and in communications between board members is the allegation that he once "stole a pregnant woman's sandwich in federal court," and used company funds for a wedding, though O'Keefe is unmarried.
As Julio reported last week, the Project Veritas board issued a statement about O'Keefe that portrayed him as simply taking well-earned time off, even though O'Keefe said the board had already acted to strip or suspend his authority within the organization without noting such developments in its public statements.
"I'm not sure what my job here is," O'Keefe said while reading minutes from board meetings in which O'Keefe was placed on leave, denied access to donor information, and stripped of power within the organization.
At more than 45 minutes long, O'Keefe's remarks provide more information from his point of view about what's been going on, though he admits "none of this makes any sense, and why is it all happening right now? Those are the questions I have," O'Keefe said. "I don't have answers."
Calling the Project Veritas board's actions an "emotional circus," O'Keefe questioned again "why there was a concerted effort to remove me the week of the biggest story we've ever had" and called the situation "extremely difficult."
"My dear team, I do love many of you," O'Keefe continued. "I never said those words, but I'll say it now. I still believe we have a long and bright future together somehow, someway," he added. "You are amazing people."
"The only way to defeat us is if they take our spirit," O'Keefe declared. "And from the looks of things, many of us remain completely undefeated and unbroken."
"So, our mission continues on," O'Keefe said, getting a bit emotional. "I'm not done. The mission will perhaps take on a new name, and it may be no longer called Project Veritas," he explained. "I'll need a bunch of people around me, and I'll make sure you know how to find me."
...James O’Keefe has departed from Project Veritas after what he said is a vote among the board to oust him as CEO.
It was clear that this separation wasn’t amicable, and by the video posted of him reading his resignation letter, O’Keefe isn’t done; he’s just done doing it under the Project Veritas banner.
According to O’Keefe, this plan to get rid of him featured board members attempting to find any reason they could to push O’Keefe out, including going to Project Veritas employees to collect grievances about him. O’Keefe presented a text message conversation between a board member and a PV journalist, where the journalist was offered a raise if Project Veritas was restructured without O’Keefe at the top.
The timing of this ousting is not a good look seeing as how Project Veritas had just dropped its biggest sting of all time. They’d gotten a Pfizer executive to admit that the company was altering the coronavirus in order to sell more vaccines, something Pfizer got incredibly rich off of during the pandemic.
The board’s actions are incredibly odd and very sudden, at least in the mind of the public. In fact, it’s the public the board now has to worry about.
What’s been going on behind Project Veritas’s walls is unclear. The private conversations that were had between board members and external players are still a mystery and may remain one for some time. However, the board’s swiftness in expelling O’Keefe, mixed with the timing, plus the reading of this resignation letter that throws the board’s motives into an unsavory light, has effectively buried Project Veritas going forward.
For one, O’Keefe and Project Veritas are pretty synonymous. Since he arrived on the scene, with Andrew Breitbart himself being his loudest proponent, O’Keefe has always been the frontman of every story Project Veritas released. While it’s been some time since I worked for Project Veritas myself, O’Keefe was in constant contact during the sting Lawrence Jones and I performed on then-Enroll America Director Chris Tarango. I imagine that with the Pfizer sting being so high-profile, O’Keefe was just as tuned in.
With O’Keefe’s name associated with undercover stings, his departure from Project Veritas will be viewed by the public as the frontman leaving the band. While the band might still be around, interest in it will decrease dramatically.
Secondly, the nature of O’Keefe’s departure is going to sour the public view of Project Veritas. O’Keefe is largely a beloved figure by the right-leaning public and his treatment at the hands of the board will instinctively cause O’Keefe’s fans to sour against the brand. They will view the board, now in full control, as villains.
The bottom line is that O’Keefe had the lion’s share of trust from the public, and with his ousting that trust will go with him. The shady method by which the board ousted this conservative hero simply makes it look untrustworthy. It really doesn’t help matters that this move came after the Pfizer sting, which is going to cause some intense speculation in and of itself.
Put all this together and it’s safe to assume that Project Veritas is dead. Unless the board can come up with a response that not only fills in a lot of the gaps and puts forward information that makes O’Keefe’s words look like the raving of a grifter, there’s hardly any way that the company recovers.
Moreover, the moment O’Keefe returns with his new venture is the moment people will forget about Project Veritas. He’ll not only have people willing to participate in his stings, but he’ll have investors lining up to help him based on his name alone.
It’s highly likely that Project Veritas is, for all intents and purposes, a dead organization walking. Its recovery is highly unlikely at this juncture.
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