It looks like right-wing pretend-dirt-digger Project Veritas is having a tough go of it of late. A couple of weeks ago, Project Veritas head James O’Keefe posted a video of the group’s flooded headquarters in Mamaronek, New York. It was the kind of thing that brings a smile to a child’s face or a tear to a mother’s eye. The grift group, known for dubious undercover videos that are frequently debunked as misleading or false pushing the myth that communist jihadists are taking over our country, does not generate much sympathy from the sentient beings of our planet, so get ready to feign some sympathy!
On Monday, O’Keefe appeared in a video posted to the brave pond scum scuba divers’ YouTube page, telling people about more company problems. Take a deep breath. Try not to laugh. Remember, this is an exercise in pretending to care, or at least giving the impression that you could be convinced to give a s!@#. Project Veritas has been had! They’ve been took! Hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! They’re out $165,000 due to what O’Keefe calls an “attack” by “fraudsters.”
Pot: Have you seen kettle?
According to O’Keefe, days before the flooding from Hurricane Ida destroyed the Project Veritas headquarters, “hackers” were able to run a relatively sophisticated-sounding scam on the group. The scammers used email to impersonate one or more of the group’s many lawyers. (Project Veritas is frequently in court suing someone or being sued for their fraudulent claims, like massive election fraud claims that were later proven to be 100% lies.*) While impersonating the lawyers and replying within an email thread between Veritas and their real lawyers, they were able to get the right-wing video company to wire $165,614.03 in legal fees to not-their-lawyers’ bank account.
The group claims that this is just one of a few cyberattacks. O’Keefe, who has claimed all kinds of things that turned out to be entirely false, claims that one of the attacks in the past has been for groups to “donate $50,000 but then asked for a refund which incurs a fee to us and they’ve done this repeatedly in an attempt to apparently hurt us.” Heh. That’s messed up. It’s not as messed up as paying a woman to pretend she was impregnated by a politician when she was a teenager and then made to get an abortion, but it’s messed up nonetheless.
Is this all true? I don’t know. In fact, with Project Veritas’ history of lying and misleading people, it’s hard to know. Would O’Keefe—a man who was given a made-up award by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ terrible-person wife, Virginia, in a Trump hotel—lie?
Most recently Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a man known for having real problems with the truth as a concept, attempted to use some of Project Veritas’ video work to say everything being reported about him was a conspiracy. It was Gaetz’s play to deflect accusations of sex trafficking and generally disreputable behavior. Project Veritas’ entire history is the bottom of the barrel. Maybe O’Keefe is just working on getting some more of that commie PPP money he’s been living off of the past year? (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.)
*100% lies.