Today Occupy Wall Street had an extra-special visitor, although one apparently not sporting his usual camera, nor the traditional 1970s pimp costume. Yes, right-wing scandal-baitor and shameless videotape re-editor James O'Keefe showed up in Liberty Plaza. But hang on, according to Gawker
there might be a catch:
That might not be good news for O'Keefe, since he's on probation and requires the permission of a federal magistrate judge to leave his home state of New Jersey. And guess what? To judge by his court file, he never got permission. Oops.
You may recall that O'Keefe was arrested in 2010 as part of a group allegedly attempting to wiretap Sen. Mary Landrieu's office phones; he pled guilty to a misdemeanor in order to avoid being charged with wiretapping, a felony. So he's on probation. Oddly enough, neither provably faking videotapes or being arrested for trying to wiretap a congressperson has yet ruined his conservative "journalism" career, which I think demonstrates a lot about what conservatives consider "journalism" to be.
According to his "spokesman" (yes, this insufferable little boil has a "spokesman," would you believe) he had permission from his probation officer. But that doesn't quite fly: there's no record of it, and more importantly he would need permission from the judge, not his probation officer, just as he had to do with every other out-of-state trip. And because today is a federal holiday, none of the attorneys involved have been responding to reporters.
Gawker speculates that it's possible the paperwork just isn't in his public case file yet. Maybe that's it, and tomorrow it will magically show up. Maybe it's going to turn out that James O'Keefe simply got on the wrong train in New Jersey, and mistakenly ended up at the crazy liberal protest because he was asking for directions on how to get away from there. Hell, maybe he just doesn't realize that New York City isn't in New Jersey. All of those things are possible.
Given that O'Keefe has spent so much time editing videotapes of others to make them look immoral or criminal, only to end up the sole recipient of a criminal record, I would enjoy seeing probation violator added to that record. If nothing else, maybe conservatives would suddenly get all hot and bothered about better treatment for probation violators, which would be interesting to watch.