MAYDAY! MAYDAY! THE DILDO LUBE BOAT HAS FALLEN! REPEAT: THE DILDO LUBE BOAT HAS FALLEN!
Friends, it’s a sad day, and once we quit laughing ourselves silly at this shambolic end for the disgraceful con artists at Project Veritas, we’ll treat this issue with the seriousness it deserves. But first …
Hahahahahahahaha! ROFLMAO! LOL forever!
Mediaite was first to report yesterday that grifting flim flam man James O’Keefe’s house of liars is no more.
According to a letter titled “Reduction in Force” that was sent to Project Veritas staffers by HR director Jennifer Kiyak on Wednesday, the organization is putting all operations on pause amidst severe financial woes.
“In the interest of preserving the possible future existence of Project Veritas we need to put operations on pause and, as communicated since the Spring, another Reduction in Force (“RIF”) is necessary,” Kiyak wrote.
It’s a fitting coda for the group which made its name releasing deceptively edited hit videos — fitting in that it’s more or less complete horseshit.
“I have no idea what ‘operations’ there are to suspend,” PV’s former chief investigative journalist Christian Hartsock told Mediaite, adding that current CEO Hanna Giles had “canned the entire production staff of a production company, and the entire journalist leadership staff of a journalism company over a month ago. So what exact ‘operations’ has she been continuing with remaining donor money — given for the sole purpose of journalism production — for the past month?”
PV was founded in 2010 by O’Keefe, a fanatically dishonest shitstirrer who pioneered the use of misinformation as a means of discrediting his political enemies. A 2009 video in which he and Giles filmed themselves interacting with voter registration activists — later edited to make it appear that they were dressed as a pimp and a prostitute — succeeded in taking out ACORN and earning himself a $100,000 settlement to one of the employees he lied about. (That is a journalism story that was broken exclusively by Your Wonkette, about which they six years later sent us the most embarrassing lawyer letter, if they were capable of embarrassment, which assumes facts LOLOLOL NOPE.)
His later hits include an attempt to lure a CNN reporter onto a “sex boat” to film her being penetrated by various objects and sending an operative to impersonate a child sex abuse victim of Senate candidate Roy Moore in an attempt to discredit the Washington Post. Along the way he pled guilty to misdemeanor charges for dressing up like a telephone repair man in an attempt to bug a senator’s office. Journalism, FTW!
Most recently, PV found itself in serious legal hot water after paying political operatives to steal Ashley Biden’s rehab diary in 2020. Those operatives pled guilty last year, and litigation over the search warrants executed at the homes of O’Keefe and two of his lieutenants is ongoing. Fittingly, these supposed warriors for free speech temporarily persuaded a court to block the New York Times from publishing attorney-client emails it got its hands on, accusing the government of leaking them to the media. Yes, that would be the same PV which wired $165,000 to hackers who were monitoring the organization’s communications with its lawyers and injected themselves into the email chain in real time.
And speaking of litigation, the implosion of PV amid revelations of O’Keefe’s profligate spending of donor cash has been quite a windfall for lawyers as well. O’Keefe spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from PV’s coffers on luxury travel, as well as to benefit his musical aspirations. O’Keefe expected the organization, which is based in New York, to financially and logistically support his appearance in a Virginia production of the musical “Oklahoma!” as well as to get him booked to DJ at Coachella. Sadly the kids in California never did get to enjoy a set of O’Keefe’s phat beats. Damn you Deep State! But O’Keefe did get himself ousted in February from the organization he founded, and then sued for breach of his employment contract and theft of trade secrets.
All of which is delightful. Who doesn’t love schadenfreude? And also … how the hell did our democracy get hacked by dipshit fraudsters like this guy and Alex Jones?
O’Keefe was one of the pioneers of what Stephen Colbert called “Truthiness.” Nothing he said was true, but it appealed to the underlying prejudices and beliefs of its intended audience. Clad in the mantle of the First Amendment, Jones, O’Keefe, and the entire rightwing media ecosystem spent the past two decades eroding journalism as an institution with standards and dunking American civic unity in an acid bath of divisive lies. They are the journalistic equivalent of arsenic-laced Halloween candy — so tasty, and so toxic! Except unlike poison trick or treats, these guys are real, and they infected rightwing media with their tactics and total disregard for objective truth.
Would Trump have been president without O’Keefe and Jones? Limbaugh? Bill O’Reilly and Roger Ailes? Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon?
It’s impossible to say. But if these assholes want to tear each other to shreds, who are we to interfere?
[Mediate]
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Friends, wonkypals, countrymen … I come to bury Pimp O’Keefe, not to praise him. I mean, there’s nothing salvageable in that fetid reputation.
Fuck that dude. That man literally inspired the shooting-up of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ohio, years ago. Three people were killed, and I believe eight injured.
The shooter was yelling some things specifically claimed in a Project Veritas video, namely, the claim that Planned Parenthood sells baby parts. They do not.
So, anyway, James O'Keeefffffeeee incited a murder.