It has been a wild couple of years for the dirtbags over at Project Veritas, the right-wing organization best known for manipulating undercover footage to create the impression that liberal agents are secretly trying to steal elections and murder babies. The general hypocrisy of the right-wing outfit has been repeatedly called out, but remains commonplace: Their connection to a possibly stolen personal item has been investigated, they lost big-time money in court, claimed they got scammed out of money, and even the weather tried to sink them (literally).
A new report released by the Intelligencer says there may be even more internal turmoil than the public turmoil we have all watched. According to the report, Project Veritas (PV) Executive Director Daniel Strack sent an internal memo to employees announcing that the face of the organization, James O’Keefe, would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.” That’s not a big deal, right? According to the report, due to a schism inside of the company, O’Keefe’s manager status is supposedly being discussed at a meeting Friday.
Teehee.
RELATED STORY: Project Veritas used $20,000 of donations to send staffers to 'anti-woke' production of 'Oklahoma!'
The Daily Beast reports that “a third” of the employees at PV signed an internal memo lambasting O’Keefe’s management style as “outright cruel.” The memo highlighted O’Keefe’s tendencies to publicly humiliate employees, as well as to force employees to take “lie detector tests.” To top this off, the nonprofit’s board, shortly after telling staff that Jimmy was going to be on some PTO, voted to reinstate two executives who O’Keefe had fired the previous week.
The Intelligencer reports that the two executives were Chief Financial Officer Tom O’Hara and Chief Strategy Officer Barry Hinckley. When Hinckley was fired, he wrote a message to staff saying he was fired because he had “stood up to a bully.”
The Daily Beast gives more details about the internal memo, which seems to include a series of personal anecdotes by O’Keefe’s staff about his shitty behavior.
The memo details a series of bizarre incidents. In one, during a Sept. 2022 trial against a Democratic consulting firm that O’Keefe later lost, an employee complained that O’Keefe berated them in front of jurors because he needed something to eat. Ultimately, the employee alleged, O’Keefe took a sandwich from a heavily pregnant woman to sate his hunger.
“I was yelled at in front of jurors because he was hungry and then he took the 8-month pregnant woman’s sandwich,” the account reads.
My favorite account is when a donor, a woman who had written a $75,000 check to the fake investigator group, allegedly asked O’Keefe if he would take a photo with her. According to the memo, O’Keefe was rude and refused to take the photo. “She was humiliated to the point of tears.” The best part of that story is that we all win—O’Keefe is a terrible person and so is the person willing to give him $75,000.
A Project Veritas spokesperson told the Intelligencer that nothing was wrong; this was just very normal stuff:
“Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization...There are 65+ employees at Project Veritas dedicated to continuing the mission to expose corruption, dishonesty, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions.”
If they’re looking for waste, maybe they can check into the $20,000 the organization spent on O’Keefe’s musical theater career.
Here’s a reminder of the time when Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife gave James O’Keefe an award for “defending liberty.”
RELATED STORIES:
Sad! Right-wing ‘undercover’ disinformation group Project Veritas underwater after Ida hits New York
Judge hits Project Veritas with $150,000 bill after it tries to kill free speech
Pot, have you seen kettle? Project Veritas says ‘fraudsters’ stole their money
Here's a picture of Clarence Thomas's wife giving an award to James O'Keefe in Trump's hotel today
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