Since 2010, Project Veritas and James O’Keefe have been personally charged with and survived more than a dozen lawsuits brought by leftists devoted to “transforming America.” Neither Project Veritas or James O’Keefe himself have ever been found guilty or sentenced with fines or other forms of punishment. That is, until this past week.
Check your news feed or search Project Veritas in a Google search. There are countless articles published over the weekend about this supposed victory against Project Veritas.
As usual however, there are details that are being left out of the reporting. This is why my blog is called the Devil’s in the Details.
I just returned from an event where I had the opportunity to hear from James O’Keefe two days after the completion of his most recent court proceedings. What are the details being left out of most of the reports that I’m reading from the American Pravda media? The presiding judge in this federal court case literally violated the law in the way he handled the proceeding.
The charge is based on claims that have nothing to do with journalism or freedom of the press, defamation, etc. Rather, O’Keefe and Project Veritas were charged with failing to uphold their “Fiduciary Duty.” Lastly the charges were stated that the plaintiffs were entitled to damages because the undercover videos produced by Project Veritas caused several staff members at both Democracy Partners and Americans United for Change to lose their jobs and have their reputations damaged. As the Washington Post reported, “[the] federal courthouse returned a verdict against Project Veritas in a case stemming from its 2016 efforts to infiltrate Democracy Partners, a progressive political consulting firm that assisted Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The verdict, which included a damages award of $120,000, followed roughly a week of testimony in the case and one day of jury deliberations.”
Democracy Partners and False Flag Operations; the back-story.
Project Veritas produced stunning undercover reports that revealed questionable tactics by the Democratic Party in the 2016 election. That year, Veritas journalists gathered undercover footage over the course of six months as they exposed the dirty tricks orchestrated by political consultant, Bob Creamer, President of Democracy Partners, and its affiliates. This includes what was described by them as “Birddogging.” Bob Creamer alleges that the Veritas undercover journalist, who volunteered and was accepted as an unpaid intern at Democracy Partners, violated wiretap statutes and made fraudulent misrepresentations. But Veritas did not bug Democracy Partners’ phones nor forced them to give any information. Creamer claims our journalist was legally required to keep Democracy Partners’ misconduct private. Except, all the information from those undercover videos were from staff members at Democracy Partners, came from their own lips, none of it was made up by Project Veritas. There is no law, statute or rules of ethics that state an undercover investigative journalist is “required” to keep activities inside an organization that is the target of said investigation “private.” The whole point of an undercover investigative journalist report is to bring to light the very things that the organization is trying to hide and keep private.
Democracy Partners were training and paying people to be agitators at Trump rallies. Their stated goal was to get people at the rallies to react in crazy and violent ways. They called it “Birddogging,” but the correct description is people who are trying to deliberately incite violence and other unacceptable behaviors. In several of the undercover videos, staff at the organization Americans United for Change were recorded calling Trump supporters “crazies.” The Hillary Clinton Campaign and the DNC were both funneling money to Democracy Partners, who in turn paid Americans United for Change to recruit, train, fund and compensate professional agitators who would disrupt Trump Campaign Rallies across the nation.
NOTE – this is nothing new. I helped train Tea Party volunteers how to recognize false-flag agitators and imposters. Once an imposter was discovered, we would follow them around with large posterboards that read “IMPOSTER,” with a large arrow pointing to the person we were shadowing. It often worked well, and the agitator would simply give up and leave.
Back to the court case and the charges.
They charged Project Veritas and James O’Keefe with “false representation” because the videos were taken by an undercover person posing as a legitimate intern and staff member at Democracy Partners. Except, that is exactly what undercover investigative journalists actually does. The objective is to catch people who are participating in illegal and unethical activities to admit so on camera while being recorded. Why, because they will never admit to the truth if they know they are talking to the public or being recorded. There is no possibility of Project Veritas and James O’Keefe to have participated in false representation because the videos clearly depict staff members at Democracy Partners and Americans United for Change saying themselves, in their own words and coming from their own lips, exactly what they are up to. These individuals where later fired from their jobs, not because they did unethical and illegal things, but because they got caught admitting to it on a secret hidden camera. Project Veritas and James O’Keefe did not inflict damage to these individuals’ career or their reputations, they did that to themselves when they were caught on camera admitting to and even bragging about what they were doing.
What is “Fiduciary Duty,” according to US Federal statute? Fiduciary Duty is defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as “a duty of utmost good faith, trust, confidence, and candor owed by a fiduciary (such as a lawyer or corporate officer) to the beneficiary (such as a lawyer’s client or a shareholder); a duty to act with the highest degree of honesty and loyalty when representing shareholders and investors.”
Well neither Project Veritas or James O’Keefe himself are employees or investors in either Democracy Partners or Americans United for Change. Therefore, Fiduciary Duty does not even apply to the case involved. As such, the judge in the case should have either dismissed the case altogether or ordered the plaintiff attorneys to remove it from the charge. He did neither.
So, what did the Judge do? He not only accepted the bogus charges, but he also later ordered the jury to award damages even though they had been unable to agree to that after hours of deliberation.
The rules for this particular federal court proceeding as clearly described in the documents and instructions that were given to the jury, clearly said that in the event that a jury could not come to a unanimous decision on damages, they were to write “0” or leave “blank” the space that asked for a damage award amount on the jury form. These rules were explained to the jury at the beginning of the proceedings. And according to project Veritas legal representation, these rules were reiterated by the judge in his instructions given to the jury before they went into private quarters to deliberate.
After a couple of hours of deliberations, the jury returned, and the foreman of the jury told the judge that they had left it blank as per instructed because they could not agree unanimously on an amount for damages. In this type of federal proceedings that is the same thing as not guilty in a criminal case because the jury could not come to a unanimous conclusion about any damages that were done to the plaintiff. But the judge was unhappy. He instructed the jury to go back and continue deliberations because it was unacceptable in his mind that they had come back leaving it blank. This is despite the fact that the court’s own rules, the instructions on the documents, and the instructions given verbally by the judge previously, told them to leave it blank if they could not agree on damages unanimously.
So, they returned and deliberated for about another hour. The jury returned to the court room and again the foreman submitted the form to the judge with the damages area still left blank. The judge again was upset. The attorney for Project Veritas began to object and criticized the judge for instructing the jury to break the rules of the court. They told the judge that they’re only doing what you instructed them to do and what the rules of the court under the statute requires them to do. The judge turned the attorney’s representing plaintiffs and asked his opinion. The plaintiff attorney essentially said nothing. He replied something to the effect of, I don’t know what to say I don’t have an opinion. The jury after returning to deliberations for a third time for more than an hour came back and listed $120,000 in the damages.
It’s pretty safe to say that this case is going to be submitted for an appeal and likely overturned. Not only did the charges have nothing to do with the any statutes that govern the actions of the journalism work of the defendants, this Obama lifetime appointed judge broke the rules and the laws under the statutes that govern such cases.
On one hand the left has been continuously trying to say that James O’Keefe and project Veritas are not legitimate journalists. Except investigative journalists have been using tactics such as going undercover and employing hidden microphones and or cameras for decades. The same media and news organizations that have continually insisted that Project Veritas is not a “legitimate journalism and news organization,” are now supporting the idea of fiduciary duty, which only apply to legitimate organizations (and only to shareholders and leadership inside the same organization). How can this be, if their claim that James O’Keefe and project Veritas are not legitimate journalists? Rhetorical question, they cannot.
The simple fact is that Fiduciary Duty does not even apply in this case because the statute only applies when shareholders and investors are suing a corporation they have invested money into. In this case, the Plaintiff attorneys and the judge agreed to apply and argue Fiduciary Duty applies because, they say, Project Veritas has damaged the industry of journalism. Well, journalism is an industry, not a corporation. So, on those grounds alone, O’Keefe and Project Veritas will get the ruling easily tossed on appeal.
Project Veritas is a legitimate organization conducting legitimate investigative journalism. Furthermore, Project Veritas never publishes anything publicly unless they have verified sources as legitimate. This is something that other news organizations such as the Washington Post, Reuters, the New York Times, and many others are not actually doing anymore. Yet they want us to trust them when they say they are legitimate news organizations operating under the rules and ethics of journalism.
I for one stopped trusting them more than thirteen years ago.
Legitimate news sites would be sure to share all of the crucial details that would shape a person’s understanding of an actual story. The American Pravda media which I would argue includes the Washington Post, Reuters and the New York Times has been deliberately leaving vital details out of their reporting with the specific goal of shaping a narrative and forming the opinions of the readers. These are most often opinions and beliefs the average reader would never form if they had been provided honest information that includes ALL the pertinent information available, not just the information that supports a certain narrative. They have been blatantly dishonest.
The reporting circulating about this week’s court ruling with Project Veritas is just another glaring example of manipulative propaganda posing as legitimate journalism.
Links & Sources
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/23/project-veritas-democracy-partners-verdict/