I just love this story so much:
In August 2022, James O’Keefe needed to get to Maine for a sailing trip. Rather than take a commercial flight for roughly $200, the conservative undercover-video activistdirected his employees to book a $12,000 helicopter flight direct from New York to the seaside town of Southwest Harbor, using funds donated to Project Veritas, the nonprofit he founded, according to a draft of a private internal audit conducted by an independent law firm.
When bad weather forced the helicopter to make an unscheduled landing in Portland, O’Keefe booked a $1,400 black car for the three-hour drive from the helipad to the sailboat. O’Keefe justified the expenses by saying that he had a meeting near the dock, the audit stated. Two Project Veritas staffers described the person he met with to The Washington Post as a low-level donor.
It wasn’t the first time O’Keefe had covered personal expenses with funds from the donor-supported nonprofit whose self-described mission is investigative journalism, according to the report compiled by Dorsey & Whitney, a firm hired by the Project Veritas board in the wake of its founder’s departure in February. A copy of the report was shared with The Post.
There was $208,980 worth of luxury black-car travel over a two-year period. There was a $600 haul of bottled water during one hotel stay in San Antonio. There was even a $2,500 set of DJ equipment;O’Keefe dreamed of playing a set at Coachella, according to two former employees, and was irritated when his staff couldn’t get him booked at the legendary California music festival.
The audit report raises questions about whether O’Keefe complied with laws that prohibit nonprofit leaders from using the organization’s funds for their personal benefit. The Westchester County, N.Y., district attorney’s office has said it is investigating O’Keefe, as first reported by the Nation.
Before he left Project Veritas in February, under pressure from its board of directors, O’Keefe was surrounded by a “cult of personality” that enabled him to behave as if he were “untouchable,” the audit concluded. The report states that it was based on interviews with 35 current and former Project Veritas staffers conducted by Dorsey & Whitney. O’Keefe did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
Hannah Giles, a onetime O’Keefe ally who is now the CEO of Project Veritas, compared O’Keefe’s spending habits to the mega-wealthy financier antihero on the Showtime television series“Billions.”
“If you’re Bobby Axelrod from ‘Billions,’ it’s fine to live like that,” Giles saidin an interview with The Post. “When you’re paying your bills from a little old lady’s Social Security checks, we’re going to have problems.”
Project Veritas gained the admiration of major conservative donors as well as small-dollar grass-roots contributors with undercover videos exposing supposed bias or wrongdoing by journalists, labor leaders and liberal advocates. In 2021 alone, it raised $21,958,641 in contributions, according to the most recent available tax forms.
But the group laid off 25 of its 40 staff members last month, Project Veritas acknowledges.In an Aug. 18 meeting, board chairman Joe Barton told staffers he was concerned that the audit, if made public, could trigger an IRS investigation or even a forced shutdown, according to a recording of the meeting that was shared with The Post.
Barton told The Post his comments reflected the opinion of the larger board. He declined to comment further on the audit.
Last year, two Florida residents pleaded guilty in connection to an FBI probe into the theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden that ended up in the possession of Project Veritas during the 2020 campaign. During that investigation, agents searched O’Keefe’s Mamaroneck, N.Y., home and seized electronic equipment, but O’Keefe was not charged with a crime. (Project Veritas never ran a story about the diary, and both O’Keefe and the nonprofit have said they acted legally as journalists.)
O’Keefe, 39, was more than the founder of Project Veritas. He was also the face of the organization, styling himself as a citizen journalist crusading against perceived corruption, hypocrisy or bias in media or liberal politics. Now, though, the nonprofit is suing him over his messy departure, which came amid questions about the group’s finances, and the board-commissioned audit includes vivid accounts of profligate spending as well as what it calls his “volatile” workplace behavior, highlighting O’Keefe’s role in the downfall of the organization.
O’Keefe declined to speak with the auditors, according to the document.
This made me laugh out loud:
In September 2021, according to the report, Hurricane Ida floodwaters threatened to destroy the Project Veritas office in Mamaroneck. The staff scrambled to save equipment and their own lives — one elderly employee was briefly pulled underwater and had to be rescued by colleagues. But O’Keefe had already left the scene, asking employees to prioritize his own evacuation so he could make it to Virginia for a performance of the musical “Oklahoma!” in which he had the lead role, according to staffers cited by the audit.
The fact that James O’Keefe believed he was going to leverage his rat-fucking operation into being a Broadway musical star is just hilarious to me. Fortunately for theatre goers, he is spectacularly untalented and it would never happen. But more importantly, unfortunately for America he has done much damage to individuals and institutions.
God willing, we have seen the last of him. But don’t bet on it. I have two words for you: Roger Stone. Zombie ratfuckers never die.