James O'Keefe is back and bigger than ever!

Ed Wood of documentary filmmaking sued for defamation and wrongful termination; caught hobnobbing with white supremacists

As any of you who might follow this blog know, things have been a bit thin around here, so you can imagine our delight when our favorite auteur, James O'Keefe, hit the headlines once again. You can't keep a good man down.

Eric Lach reports at Talking Points Memo:

The conservative guerrilla filmmaker James O'Keefe and his organization, Project Veritas, have been sued for wrongful termination by a former employee.

As first reported by Slate's David Weigel, Daniel Francisco initiated the lawsuit in Westchester County, N.Y. Supreme Court on Jan. 27. Francisco, who until earlier this year worked as the executive director of Project Veritas, claimed in a court filing that he had been "wrongfully terminated" by Project Veritas, that Project Veritas had "breached its contract" with him by not paying for his final week of employment, and that O'Keefe personally had "defamed" him following his departure from the organization. The lawsuit seeks monetary damages and a declaratory judgment to stop O'Keefe from "further defaming" Francisco...>more

 ...and meanwhile, our comrade Daryle Lamont Jenkins gives us a Rogues' Gallery Update over at One People's Project:
In 2012, the documentary Hating Breitbart, which attempts to paint the then-recently departed conservative propagandist Andrew Breitbart as some persecuted enemy of the left – which he was – who was merely getting the truth out about them – which he wasn't, was released. Ultimately Breitbart died as nothing more than someone who was trying to cover up the racial crimes of  his conservative cohorts, and he did it with flimsy evidence and his infamous temper tantrums whenever someone showed him up. We bring up the documentary because in it was a little bit of a milestone – Breitbart protege James O'Keefe saying the first words he has ever said about the fact that he participated in an Arlington, VA white supremacist forum put together by the Robert A. Taft Club in 2006.

In one segment, the documentary zeroes in on political writer Max Blumenthal for authoring a story for Salon.com where he notes O'Keefe attending this conference where the panelists were American Renaissance editor Jared Taylor then-National Review Online writer John Derbyshire, who in 2012 was fired from that position after a racist article he had written in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, and Project 21 member Kevin Martin, a black conservative who was not announced until a few days before the event. "Blumenthal said that because I was at a debate where this racist guy was debating this black guy, because I was present...then he went on to say how I organized the debate, blah, blah, blah. It's all false,” O'Keefe says in the segment just before they cut to the argument Breitbart and his Breitbart.com associate Larry O'Connor had with Blumenthal at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "And Breitbart went after him and say, 'Why did you lie?'"

The entire situation was a lesson in how mainstream conservatives will act when they are caught engaging in their racist activism. It was not Blumenthal that was lying, it was the Breitbart crowd that orchestrated a narrative that O'Keefe was just some unknowing participant in the event where he shook Kevin Martin's hand afterwards saying he did not agree with the other two persons on the panel. But when something is a narrative that means what is being said will be the real lie, and the reason why we at One People's Project in particular know its a lie is because it wasn't Blumenthal who broke the story. We did. We were at the conference as well, and we took pictures of everyone that attended. One of those pictures happened to be of O'Keefe with Taylor in the background (foto above left)...>more

And now, it's movie time!

Here's O'Keefe's late homie Andrew Breitbart in a montage of classic meltdowns including CPAC 2010:


And, here are edited highlights of the "Majority Strategy" event at the National Press Club in September 2011. Jared Taylor is the final speaker in the video:

The Big Troubles of James O'Keefe and His Sponsors

"Project Veritas" DC Office On M Street Turns Out To Be Rental Mailbox

Wade Rathke writes at the Chief Organizer blog:
New Orleans: It turns out that just like the song says, “it’s hard on a pimp” or a “punk” or a “pretend pimp,” which turns out is the case for video-sting-man James O’Keefe and his futile attempts to “come clean” and pull off his greatest ironic caper: boy journalist.

You know it’s a dog pile when something as staid, boring and nose-in-the-air as The Chronicle of Philanthropy takes a look down at your problems, but sure enough, O’Keefe wants to make sure he gives his right-wing buddies a tax break for supporting his chicanery, so he’s applied for tax exempt 501c3 status for his paradoxically named “Project Veritas,” which used to be Latin for truth, but who knows what O’Keefe thinks it stands for. But here’s the Chronicle’s cut:

“An attempt to visit Mr. O’Keefe at Project Veritas’s official address in Washington—2100 M Street N.W., Suite 170-241—was also unsuccessful. Suite 170 is a UPS store and No. 241 is a small mailbox that rents for $35 a month.

Project Veritas’s first step in getting an exemption is to file an application with the IRS known as Form 1023.

As part of that application process, Project Veritas must meet key requirements about how the group is organized and operated and spell out what charitable mission it will pursue.

Organizations must also prove that their assets do not unjustly enrich board members or officers and that board members do not pursue business activities unrelated to their tax-exempt purpose. Applicants must also show that they do “not engage in activities that are illegal or violate fundamental public policy.”

…Mr. O’Keefe pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor crime after he and three others entered the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, last year pretending to be telephone repairmen.

The fact that Mr. O’Keefe has stated in public that he would do it again, albeit “differently” would probably be the biggest stumbling block to gaining charity status, said Marc Owens, a Washington tax lawyer who formerly oversaw the IRS division that monitors tax-exempt groups.

“If he is proposing to do something that is, in fact, illegal, can the IRS believe, with any degree of credibility, what he is saying?” Mr. Owens said. “Is he going to continue to enter government offices illegally? He pled guilty to it once and said he would do it again. It’s reasonable to conclude that the organization may be engaged in criminal activity in the future.”

Bottom line: They are not sure you should get tax free donations when you announce that you may break the law with the money. Geez, they have kind of a point there.... >more