The Ben Shapiro Show - How Far Would You Go to Find The Truth?

00:00:00.000 Everybody is sort of opining on the events of the day and telling you what to believe or who to vote for or what the public policy is good or bad.

00:00:07.000 That is not what I do.

00:00:09.000 For example, people may ask, your audience might be asking, well, what, what stories are you going to focus on?

00:00:13.000 I said, I don't know what stories I'm going to focus on, but all the stories will have one thing in common.

00:00:17.000 They'll expose liars, cheats, and frauds.

00:00:21.000 James O'Keefe and I have known each other for over a decade, both of us coming up in the world of media and politics under the mentorship of our dear friend Andrew Breitbart.

00:00:28.000 I first met James as he was in the process of showing the Acorn tapes to Andrew.

00:00:32.000 Those tapes exposed the prominent Obama-affiliated community activist group as corrupt left-wing radicals, which became the genesis of Project Veritas, the nonprofit news organization founded by James from which he was controversially ousted last month.

00:00:44.000 James has always been fearless.

00:00:46.000 Over the last 14 years, he built perhaps the most effective whistleblower operation this country has ever seen.

00:00:51.000 He's exposed government, corporate, and nonprofit corruption at every level.

00:00:55.000 He's paved the way in establishing citizen journalism and pulling off some of the most consequential exposés in a generation.

00:01:01.000 Under James' leadership, Project Veritas exposed corruption, bias, and wrongdoing at some of the most prominent organizations in America, including ACORN, Planned Parenthood, NPR, And Pfizer.

00:01:13.000 James O'Keefe has been unsurprisingly treated as pariah by legacy media and big tech, but no one expected his role as the CEO of Project Veritas to come to an abrupt end.

00:01:23.000 That ending sent shockwaves through the media and the conservative movement.

00:01:26.000 For reasons that remain contested, the board at Project Veritas placed James on an indefinite suspension pending an investigation, and on February 20th, James announced his resignation as CEO.

00:01:36.000 The board's treatment of James was met with indignation from conservatives who have supported and cheered on James' work over the years.

00:01:41.000 Many questions still remain.

00:01:43.000 But he isn't letting this setback stop him.

00:01:45.000 I sat down with James to discuss his brand new venture, O'Keefe Media Group, and his vision for the future of citizen journalism.

00:01:51.000 We also discuss the FBI raid on his home, recovering from the Project Veritas ousting, and what comes next.

00:02:07.000 Hey, welcome.

00:02:07.000 This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.

00:02:10.000 Excited to have on the line with us James O'Keefe.

00:02:12.000 James, thanks so much for joining the show.

00:02:14.000 Ben, great to be with you.

00:02:16.000 So, I know your time is tight, so let's just jump right into, obviously, the most controversial aspect of what's going on right now, and that is the launch of your brand new organization.

00:02:24.000 So, why don't you give us, for folks who are not in the know, the backstory of how Project Veritas broke with you, or you broke with Project Veritas, because obviously, for most people, myself included, you're synonymous with the organization.

00:02:35.000 I mean, the idea that Project Veritas is going to continue as an organization without James O'Keefe, that's like saying that Coca-Cola is going to continue without the formula for Coca-Cola.

00:02:42.000 So, can you explain exactly what went down with Project Veritas?

00:02:46.000 Well, I, it was a bizarre thing, Ben.

00:02:48.000 I spent 13 years of my life.

00:02:50.000 Um, I met you around that time, the acorn story with Andrew Breitbart many years ago.

00:02:55.000 And, um, I spent 14 years building that organization.

00:02:58.000 And then I broke the story on Pfizer, uh, last week in January.

00:03:02.000 And then a week later I was ousted from the organization.

00:03:05.000 So I've been the same guy for many years.

00:03:07.000 Um, they, they made arguments that, uh, I took too many black cars and, and took sandwiches from pregnant women and some other strange things.

00:03:16.000 But it's very peculiar.

00:03:17.000 I posted a video, a 45-minute long video three weeks ago, my departing remarks to my staff, and I was pretty honest and vulnerable about everything.

00:03:27.000 So I don't really know I never really figured out what exactly happened, but it's important for me to continue with my mission.

00:03:33.000 So I've learned a lot from this.

00:03:36.000 I never really focused on board composition or board management, but I can tell you that while there were some really horrible things that happened, I also saw a lot of goodness in the people around me, some really good journalists.

00:03:50.000 And right now I've assembled a team of about a dozen elite Journalists and I'm going to alter my vision a little bit and I'm going to crowdsource out the journalism and decentralized journalism so I can give hundreds of cameras to other people.

00:04:03.000 So that's everything in a nutshell, but I can get more into some of the detail if you want.

00:04:07.000 So I'd love to hear about what the new organization is going to do and how it's going to differ from Project Veritas.

00:04:11.000 How is Project Veritas run?

00:04:12.000 And then how is the new organization going to be run differently, do you think?

00:04:17.000 So the new organization is O-M-G. 1.00

00:04:19.000 My name, O'KeefeMediaGroup.com.

00:04:23.000 O-M-G, sort of like a spinoff of TMZ there.

00:04:27.000 And I posted a little announcement video.

00:04:29.000 And in this announcement video, I'm dancing, I'm eating sandwiches, I'm getting out of black cars.

00:04:35.000 I am who I am.

00:04:36.000 I'm an artistic person.

00:04:39.000 I've always been an artistic person.

00:04:41.000 I think journalism is about storytelling and exposing what needs to be exposed and doing it in a visual format.

00:04:50.000 This mission, O'Keefe Media Group, is about getting little cameras into the hands of thousands of people and helping everyone be a journalist.

00:05:00.000 I've been saying that for many years.

00:05:01.000 I don't think I was ready to accomplish that.

00:05:05.000 At Project Veritas, I was the CEO and Chairman of that organization.

00:05:09.000 That was a 501c3 non-profit.

00:05:11.000 This is not a 501c3.

00:05:12.000 It has no board.

00:05:14.000 I own it.

00:05:16.000 But it's just like Daily Wire.

00:05:18.000 It's a subscription-based model, but the subscriptions are to sponsor these cameras.

00:05:22.000 These cameras are not cheap.

00:05:24.000 They can run $800.

00:05:26.000 But there's also the Jeff Bezos version, which is 20 or 40 bucks.

00:05:29.000 People are buying those by themselves.

00:05:32.000 So the mission is to teach people, then, about journalism ethics, teach people about technology, teach people about recording laws in various states.

00:05:41.000 I intend to open source all of that on the website, which is not yet built out.

00:05:46.000 It will be in the coming weeks ahead.

00:05:49.000 And basically teach everyone how to do this.

00:05:51.000 That's my vision.

00:05:52.000 It's a very ambitious mission, but I intend to do that, get this ready to go in the next few months.

00:05:59.000 Well, I mean, obviously you were close with Andrew Breitbart so was I, and this sounds like sort of a reification of many of the things that he talked about very early on when you and I met.

00:06:06.000 The idea that everyone with a camera was now a journalist, and now you're actually making that real by helping to get people those cameras and then teaching them the basic rules of journalism is sort of what it sounds like.

00:06:16.000 Yeah, I think there's four different things we need to teach people.

00:06:20.000 Journalism ethics is critical and you hear that a lot, but I think we all know journalism has been dead for a long time now.

00:06:27.000 You guys have revived it a bit at Daily Wire.

00:06:30.000 There really isn't really any investigative reporting going on in this country.

00:06:34.000 All the corporate media has stopped doing it because it's too expensive.

00:06:38.000 As an attorney, you know that there's a lot of legal issues inherent in recording.

00:06:43.000 There's 38 states where it's perfectly legal and 12 where it's problematic.

00:06:46.000 So everyone has to be equipped with that information to do it.

00:06:50.000 But I think it's important to decentralize journalism.

00:06:55.000 I think it's important for people who have access to the proverbial scene of the crime, you know, whether you're in the FDA or the government or Pfizer or wherever you are, it's a lot harder for me to try to infiltrate or to get someone inside.

00:07:08.000 It's a lot easier for people out there who already know someone who's there to do it themselves.

00:07:15.000 And again, Andrew and I talked about this many years ago.

00:07:18.000 I just wasn't ready for it yet.

00:07:19.000 I wasn't well known enough.

00:07:21.000 I didn't have the goodwill.

00:07:23.000 In many ways, Ben, the story I did on Pfizer, which you covered a month ago, this was the guy who was talking about mutating the virus.

00:07:29.000 He smashed the equipment when I showed him the story.

00:07:32.000 I think me being thrown out of the company that I founded, I actually think that inspired a lot of people.

00:07:37.000 They were like, whoa, that's crazy that you were ousted from an organization that you founded just a week after that story The timing was very peculiar to people, and it led more sources to come to me.

00:07:51.000 I got 10,000 emails saying, hey, give me one of those cameras.

00:07:54.000 So I didn't have that 10 years ago.

00:07:56.000 We have that now.

00:07:58.000 We're going to capitalize on that goodwill by making this mission come to life.

00:08:03.000 Come to life.

00:08:04.000 You know, James, one of the things that I've said about, you know, the thing that you do is that, you know, there's this attempt by those in the journalism industry to say that there is such a thing as, quote unquote, a journalist.

00:08:15.000 And the journalist is, you know, touched by the hand of God and has special gifts and abilities and special credentials.

00:08:21.000 And those special credentials mean that you can be as biased and insane as you want to be, or in many cases, inaccurate as you want to be.

00:08:27.000 But so long as you have the journalist hat, then this means that you are a journalist.

00:08:31.000 You're a normal citizen, and you commit an act of journalism.

00:08:34.000 You're not actually a journalist, because there's no such thing as an act of journalism.

00:08:37.000 I've described what you do as acts of journalism.

00:08:40.000 The reports that you make are, in and of themselves, journalism.

00:08:43.000 And so it's less about the label that is on you.

00:08:45.000 Because I think this is the way that the left has tried to attack it.

00:08:47.000 Well, you didn't go to J-school.

00:08:49.000 Well, you know, you didn't work at a big organization.

00:08:50.000 You don't know all the rules of journalism-ing.

00:08:53.000 And therefore, the breaking stories that you provide are not actual journalism.

00:08:56.000 That seems to me a way of credentialing your way out of the central problem, which, as you say, is that many journalists don't actually do journalism, while many common citizens are doing acts of journalism.

00:09:07.000 Yeah, I think that's a very astute point, that journalism, as you say, it's an activity, not just an identity.

00:09:14.000 And journalism is an action.

00:09:16.000 It's something that you do.

00:09:17.000 And not just that, it's also reporting the cold, hard facts.

00:09:22.000 Everybody is sort of opining on the events of the day and telling you what to believe or who to vote for or what the public policy is, good or bad.

00:09:29.000 That is not what I do.

00:09:31.000 For example, people may ask, your audience might be asking, well, what stories are you gonna focus on?

00:09:35.000 I say, I don't know what stories I'm gonna focus on, but all the stories will have one thing in common.

00:09:39.000 They'll expose liars, cheats, and frauds.

00:09:42.000 Journalism, investigative reporting, is a little different than what you see on television.

00:09:49.000 It's reporting secrets that powerful people want kept hidden for the wrong reasons.

00:09:54.000 For example, Walker at Pfizer, he was a doctor and he said, nobody can know that we're doing this.

00:10:00.000 Please don't tell anybody that we're mutating the virus It's good for our bottom line.

00:10:06.000 Why does he want that to be kept secret?

00:10:08.000 If you say these things, if you're doing these things and you're powerful, you should be proud of what you're doing.

00:10:13.000 CNN, another example.

00:10:15.000 CNN, we famously caught them about a year or two ago saying that we're an anti-Trump network.

00:10:21.000 Okay, then just say that.

00:10:23.000 If that's what you want to do, if that's what Jeff Zucker, a former president, then say, we are the anti-Trump network, but don't try to hide it.

00:10:30.000 So that's what I specialize in.

00:10:33.000 I am not a public policy expert.

00:10:35.000 I don't claim to have some special knowledge about that.

00:10:39.000 I guess that's what Congress is supposed to do, which is pass laws in the interest of the citizens.

00:10:44.000 What I'm trying to do is get information into the hands of the citizens So that they make the best decisions to elect the right representatives.

00:10:51.000 Because I actually believe that if people had any idea what was actually going on in the three-letter agencies and the schools, I think we're seeing more of that now, then they would be rightfully outraged.

00:11:03.000 And they would make the right public policy decisions.

00:11:05.000 Maybe that's the libertarian in me.

00:11:07.000 I believe that people need to have access to the information.

00:11:10.000 I believe if people did, they would make the right decisions.

00:11:13.000 Some say I'm an optimist for believing that.

00:11:16.000 That's what I believe.

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00:12:09.000 vpn.com slash ben there is no reason that anybody else should have control over your data so keep control over your data with expressvpn.com slash ben James, one of the things that's been really evident throughout your career, and again, you and I have known each other since you first walked into Andrew's basement, actually, with the Acorn tapes.

00:12:25.000 That's actually when I first met you.

00:12:26.000 That must have been circa 2008, maybe?

00:12:29.000 2009?

00:12:29.000 Somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:12:31.000 And the critiques of you have taken a few different lines.

00:12:34.000 So the main critique, as I say, has been that he's not a journalist.

00:12:37.000 And then attendance on that critique has been, well, you know, he edits.

00:12:40.000 He edits.

00:12:42.000 You hear the phrase selectively edited coming up a lot.

00:12:44.000 This has been true all the way since the Acorn tapes when you revealed Acorn station after Acorn station talking about how they would essentially facilitate funding for underage child prostitution.

00:12:54.000 And you revealed that tape and then, oh, it's selectively edited, selectively edited.

00:12:59.000 Can you speak to the difference between, quote unquote, selective editing, the way that they're accusing you of doing and what it is that you actually do?

00:13:06.000 And by the way, there's one more that when I met you 13 years ago, you wrote a piece because you went to Harvard Law School, and they said, well, the Acorn employees were exonerated.

00:13:16.000 They didn't break the law.

00:13:17.000 And you astutely pointed out, well, they didn't break the law because James wasn't an actual pimp, actually.

00:13:25.000 starting a brothel, he was just pretending to be one.

00:13:28.000 So that was one of the more bizarre and peculiar criticisms of me. 0.98

00:13:31.000 Well, these people didn't break the law, so James is a liar. 0.91

00:13:33.000 Oh, okay.

00:13:34.000 Well, they said what they said.

00:13:36.000 Editing, yeah.

00:13:37.000 I actually think that's sort of faded away, Ben.

00:13:39.000 They used to say that I edit, they've stopped saying that.

00:13:43.000 All journalists edit.

00:13:45.000 All good journalism is edited.

00:13:47.000 All Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting is edited.

00:13:50.000 Journalism is not just releasing raw stuff.

00:13:53.000 It's giving the who, what, when, where, why.

00:13:55.000 It's assembling it into a package because you have limited time.

00:13:58.000 You can't put out three hours and 48 minutes of tape.

00:14:01.000 You can't, for example, show unredacted source material.

00:14:05.000 You can't show the hidden camera part where the guy forgot to turn off and urinated in the stall.

00:14:10.000 There are certain things that you have to redact.

00:14:12.000 There are certain sources that you have to protect.

00:14:15.000 And in order to get the information out in a limited amount of time, and everything has to be done in context, it's not easy to do, it's an art, but if you look at the New York Times today and the hyperbole and the mendacious innuendo of the newspapers, the Washington Post and the New York Times in particular, the way that they arrange, you know what I'm talking about, they chop the quotes, they describe things in this mendacious way, So you don't even know what you're reading.

00:14:39.000 It's almost like you have to twist the newspaper to figure out what... Let me give you one quick example.

00:14:45.000 They did this to me last year.

00:14:46.000 The New York Times said... This is their actual headline, Ben.

00:14:50.000 They somehow got a copy of my attorney-client memos after the FBI raid against me.

00:14:56.000 And they said, documents show that Project Veritas and James O'Keefe tried not to run afoul of federal laws and all this.

00:15:07.000 So they wrote this article in this mendacious way when what they're really saying is James O'Keefe tried really hard not to break the law.

00:15:15.000 And it's the way that they wrote it.

00:15:17.000 So they're the ones who edit.

00:15:19.000 And they accuse me of that which they are guilty of.

00:15:23.000 They project onto me precisely who they are.

00:15:26.000 So of course they're going to accuse me of editing when they wordsmith articles in that mendacious way.

00:15:32.000 But they can never actually point out what the edit is.

00:15:35.000 James O'Keefe's edit.

00:15:36.000 Please tell me, identify for me, where the edit in my work is and I will apologize if I've made a mistake.

00:15:42.000 But they can never do that.

00:15:44.000 Yeah, James, one of the things that's always striking about the media coverage of what it is you do is that if the left were to break similar stories about the right using exactly the same methodologies that you've been using, of course, they would be winning Pulitzer Prizes.

00:15:55.000 You do this sort of stuff, and they immediately claim, number one, that you're dishonest, and number two, they claim that the methodologies that you're using are dishonest.

00:16:02.000 So things like undercover footage or recording conversations that are happening in public These sorts of things are supposedly super terrible, but, you know, when it's serving left-wing purposes, then these people are the best journalists on planet Earth.

00:16:16.000 It's not about the methods.

00:16:18.000 It's about whose ox you're perceived to be goring.

00:16:21.000 It's all about politics, and it's all about power.

00:16:25.000 It's never actually about you can't record people or produce it in a certain way.

00:16:29.000 They, of course, do that all the time.

00:16:30.000 For example, David Daleiden's famous undercover investigation into Planned Parenthood.

00:16:35.000 Remember that one, 2015?

00:16:36.000 I know him.

00:16:37.000 I work with Lila Rose, and he worked with Lila Rose.

00:16:40.000 That was the body parts undercover camera investigation.

00:16:43.000 Kamala Harris, the then Attorney General of California, Can you imagine Kamala Harris raiding undercover journalists to record puppies being abused?

00:16:49.000 his equipment. Imagine if David DeLeon had recorded abuse at puppy mills in California.

00:16:56.000 Now, they try to go after him for California Penal Code 632, recording without permission.

00:17:02.000 But can you imagine Kamala Harris raiding undercover journalists to record puppies being abused? She would never do that. And that's the lack of equality before the law. 1.00

00:17:11.000 And that's why I've defended Dalyden.

00:17:13.000 So it's never about the methods, Ben.

00:17:16.000 It's about who you're exposing.

00:17:19.000 It's about power.

00:17:20.000 I think we should level the playing field and get cameras in the hands of everyone.

00:17:24.000 And on this opifmediagroup.com, you can actually sponsor a camera.

00:17:29.000 Again, about $800,000 to get these special little James Bond cameras, which, by the way, I'm now in the manufacturing business.

00:17:36.000 I am going to be modifying them.

00:17:39.000 And we will make sure that we have the legal primer on our website because, again, there are 38 states where this is legal and 12 where you have to be careful.

00:17:48.000 For example, in California, you have to be in a public place.

00:17:51.000 We'll make sure everyone has that information.

00:17:53.000 So, James, you know, when you look at sort of, you know, the amount of footage that's going to come back to you, and it's going to be extraordinary amounts of footage, because if you've got hundreds of people out there who are investigating stories, you're going to need a big staff.

00:18:03.000 I mean, I'd imagine it's going to take an enormous amount of resources just to go through all of this, investigate the stories that are coming back to you.

00:18:09.000 You know, we here at Daily Wire, we have a big company, a big staff.

00:18:12.000 We don't have all the resources necessary to do this sort of stuff.

00:18:14.000 How big do you imagine your staff is going to have to be just to cull through this footage and then investigate what is actually newsworthy and what's not?

00:18:20.000 I think initially, right now, I have a dozen.

00:18:23.000 At Veritas, I had 70 employees.

00:18:25.000 Whenever you get above 50, it always becomes, scaled management is never easy.

00:18:31.000 In addition to being a journalist, I'm also running the company.

00:18:34.000 It's a good question.

00:18:35.000 I would say I have a two-part answer.

00:18:38.000 Initially, we have to curate the material.

00:18:41.000 It's a lot easier to curate the material than it is to collect it, I've learned, Ben, in my life.

00:18:46.000 Undercover work sometimes takes six to nine months, so if you have someone with an access point into an organization and they just send you the material, you've cut out 99% of the expense and 99% of the work.

00:18:58.000 However, your point is well taken.

00:19:00.000 When you have thousands of people recording, what you have to then do is not curate it yourself but teach them how to curate it themselves.

00:19:09.000 In other words, you have to help them identify what a story is, you have to help them perhaps produce the material themselves, tell the story themselves.

00:19:18.000 People do often struggle with finding, you know, communicating in a very short amount of time what's important.

00:19:25.000 And I intend to teach people how to do that.

00:19:27.000 In fact, I won't say which because I don't want to have what happened to Charlie Kirk or the Antifa come or whatever, but I've been invited to speak at a journalism school, a very famous one.

00:19:36.000 This is the first time in my life I've been invited to teach a course on on ethics of covert recording.

00:19:44.000 And I intend to film it and produce it like you would see a master class.

00:19:48.000 And these are the sorts of things I want to do.

00:19:50.000 I want to teach people how to do it themselves so that I don't have to curate it.

00:19:55.000 And if that vision comes to life, I think that could change the world.

00:20:00.000 That's really what I want to do.

00:20:03.000 But in the interim, I have this team of 12 that I've identified in the very short term that will curate the material.

00:20:11.000 So James, let's go back in time to when the idea of doing this sort of stuff first occurred to you.

00:20:15.000 So obviously you were a gadfly going all the way back.

00:20:17.000 I actually saw a tape of you today from almost 20 years ago back at Rutgers trying to get the board of Rutgers to ban Lucky Charms in order to not offend the Irish for St.

00:20:29.000 Patrick's Day and succeeding in that apparently.

00:20:31.000 So you were a gadfly and you were a prankster going all the way back to 2005.

00:20:35.000 But how did this turn into sort of a journalistic crusade?

00:20:38.000 This is the very first thing I've ever done to this effect.

00:20:42.000 I went into the vice president of Rutgers, St.

00:20:46.000 Patrick's Day 2005, 18 years ago today.

00:20:50.000 And I said that the leprechaun was offensive to my heritage.

00:20:54.000 You could say I was a little ahead of my time.

00:20:56.000 I'm not sure that irony would even work today.

00:20:58.000 We were having this conversation this morning with my staff.

00:21:01.000 I don't know.

00:21:02.000 Is that even funny anymore?

00:21:05.000 But at the time, it was ironic.

00:21:05.000 Is irony dead?

00:21:08.000 The vice president of HR, a woman named Carolyn Knight Cole, with a straight face, took copious notes and said, can you tell me that again?

00:21:15.000 How does the leprechaun offend you?

00:21:16.000 I said, well, it offends my heritage.

00:21:19.000 As you can see, we're not all lucky.

00:21:21.000 We have our differences of height.

00:21:22.000 And I was trying to keep a straight face.

00:21:24.000 I failed to.

00:21:25.000 I actually laughed out loud.

00:21:27.000 I turned it into a nervous cry. You can see it. I reposted it today.

00:21:30.000 And they actually told me they would ban Lucky Charms. And I took out the campus speech codes, which said you can't offend anybody's heritage. As an Irishman, I said, well, this offends my heritage. So it's sort of like making them live up to their own book of rules. And they're damned either way, because if they don't ban Lucky Charms, they're going to break their own law.

00:21:52.000 If they do ban Lucky Charms, they're becoming a laughingstock on campus.

00:21:56.000 And that dichotomy is what launched what I would call Veritas visuals, which eventually became Project Veritas. So yeah, I've been doing this for 20 years. You might ask what prompted me to do that?

00:22:09.000 I don't know. I guess it was the artist in me wanted to bring things to light and to expose things for what they were. What prompted me to do that? I was a thespian in high school.

00:22:23.000 I was a person who did like to read the newspapers and I watched local news and I was very contemptuous of what I saw and I wanted to do something about it.

00:22:32.000 So that was the genesis.

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00:23:29.000 So, let's start with the story.

00:23:40.000 You and I know the story because we were there, but why don't you tell the story for people who don't know the story of the Acorn videos?

00:23:45.000 Because that's really when you first broke into sort of the American public imagination, breaking the series of videos demonstrating that a very highly networked, Democratic front group, was in fact engaging in what would have been a legal activity if you'd actually been not an undercover journalist, but actually had been the thing that you purported to be.

00:24:03.000 So why don't you first explain to people, because it's been a long time, what exactly Acorn was doing, how you decided to go after Acorn, how that story developed, and then what your relationship was with our friend Andrew Breitbart.

00:24:12.000 Yes, and I wrote a whole book about this.

00:24:14.000 So I'll try to summarize it in a New York Minute.

00:24:18.000 ACORN was the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

00:24:21.000 Barack Obama was an attorney for ACORN.

00:24:24.000 I didn't even know what ACORN was.

00:24:26.000 I'm sure many of you may not remember or don't know, but they did housing.

00:24:30.000 They got federal money to assist low-income people with housing, and they also helped with voter registration.

00:24:36.000 So I was doing what I was doing now on a much tinier scale.

00:24:39.000 I was 24 years old.

00:24:41.000 I think I knew you, Ben, or knew of you, and you had shared some work I did on Planned Parenthood.

00:24:46.000 I sent messages on Facebook to random citizens, and one of them was named Hannah Giles.

00:24:51.000 She was a young woman who was an intern for a group called YAF.

00:24:55.000 And I said, Hannah, maybe you should do this sort of work.

00:24:59.000 And she said, James, why don't we go into Acorn? 0.98

00:25:02.000 And she actually proposed that she dress up like a prostitute. 1.00

00:25:07.000 and do a secret shopper sting. 1.00

00:25:09.000 And I said, well, I'll be a pimp.

00:25:11.000 And we thought this would be novel because they were engaged in various law-breaking, so it was alleged.

00:25:16.000 So we thought, what an ingenious idea.

00:25:19.000 Go in and present yourself as lawbreakers with this sort of hilarious, agitprop, punk rock, Borat, Mike Wallace sort of thing.

00:25:27.000 I had a camera embedded in my tie.

00:25:30.000 It was a pinhole camera with a wire into my pocket.

00:25:35.000 These cameras were different about 15 years ago and there was no Amazon where you can buy them.

00:25:42.000 And I recorded in Baltimore this lady telling me, I was scared to death and my heart was beating 180 beats per minute because I'm saying outrageous stuff about underage hookers and I'm going to use the money to do illegal things. 0.99

00:25:57.000 And she told me how to lie on my tax forms and classify the underage girls All of which I was just making up, but she didn't know that. 0.95

00:26:05.000 She said, call them dependents on your tax forms and lie to the government and don't let the police catch you.

00:26:11.000 I met Andrew Breitbart.

00:26:15.000 I went to his home in Los Angeles, knocked on his door, showed him the tapes, And we became kind of a dynamic duo.

00:26:22.000 He told me, release the tapes one at a time.

00:26:24.000 The media will say it's an independent, isolated incident.

00:26:28.000 They did do that on day one.

00:26:29.000 CNN said it was isolated.

00:26:31.000 They released the second, third, fourth, and fifth tapes.

00:26:34.000 And then by the fifth tape, the House of Representatives, democratically controlled, voted to defund ACORN.

00:26:40.000 The Senate voted 83 to 7, this is a democratically controlled United States Senate to defund ACORN, and Barack Obama signed that legislation probably because he wanted to distance himself, but nevertheless, that's how the world has changed.

00:26:54.000 You could never see an even Republican-led Congress defund anything, let alone a social welfare organization funded by your tax dollars.

00:27:04.000 And South Park covered it.

00:27:06.000 Jon Stewart covered it.

00:27:07.000 This is a little bit of a different world 13 years ago.

00:27:09.000 This is September 15th, 2009.

00:27:13.000 And then everyone realized, wow, this sort of journalism works.

00:27:16.000 It's funny.

00:27:17.000 It's interesting.

00:27:19.000 And Project Veritas was born.

00:27:21.000 So what was it like for you on a personal level?

00:27:23.000 I know obviously, you know, you and I were a lot more anonymous when we first met, but you know, you became famous pretty much overnight.

00:27:29.000 I mean, you went from being somebody that nobody knew to somebody that everybody knew, and that came with extraordinary levels of attendance attacks.

00:27:35.000 I mean, you've been on the end of a number of tsunamis over the years.

00:27:38.000 What was it like to first experience the tsunami of rage that came at you in the aftermath of the Acorn Tapes?

00:27:44.000 The first thing that comes to my mind is the media.

00:27:48.000 We all know this because we're all astute observers of the press.

00:27:51.000 It's another thing to live through it.

00:27:54.000 CNN called my phone that day like 70 times trying to get a hold of me.

00:28:00.000 And Andrew Breitbart said, do not pick up that phone.

00:28:01.000 They're going to personalize it.

00:28:02.000 They're going to attack you.

00:28:03.000 They're going to make the story about you.

00:28:05.000 So I followed his advice and I never picked up the phone from CNN reporters and they couldn't personalize it.

00:28:11.000 The Washington Post ran a story, not about my revelations, but about who funded my investigation.

00:28:17.000 Was it the Koch brothers?

00:28:19.000 Was it the billionaires?

00:28:20.000 Of course there were no Koch brothers.

00:28:22.000 I still haven't gotten funding from the Koch brothers.

00:28:23.000 They're welcome to sponsor me if they're watching this.

00:28:26.000 But there were no billionaire anything.

00:28:30.000 It was literally as crazy as you can imagine.

00:28:32.000 It was Hannah and I putting it on our credit card.

00:28:35.000 I used my grandmother's chinchilla coat to be the pimp.

00:28:40.000 So the media couldn't fathom this.

00:28:42.000 They needed to personalize it.

00:28:44.000 They needed to make it about this.

00:28:45.000 They even wrote a story about, you know, about where I got the video camera from.

00:28:51.000 It was actually a Christmas gift from my mother.

00:28:56.000 Then, I would say, Ben, the personal attacks became much more vicious.

00:29:00.000 My Wikipedia page was vicious.

00:29:02.000 They tried to claim the tapes were edited.

00:29:04.000 I remember I was 25 years old, sitting in front of my computer, literally tearing up about being presented in such a horrible way on Wikipedia.

00:29:16.000 And there's really nothing I can do about it.

00:29:18.000 I can't edit the Wikipedia page because they immediately have an army of people, I guess Media Matters or whoever it is, that's editing it right back to what it is.

00:29:26.000 So yeah, this is a really hard thing to digest, to accept.

00:29:31.000 You have to accept it.

00:29:33.000 And there are certain things that we can't control.

00:29:34.000 And I just learned at a very young age, the only way is to just keep going, to keep putting out more stories.

00:29:43.000 You're only as good as your next story.

00:29:45.000 And that's what I did.

00:29:46.000 I probably put out a thousand investigations over the last 13 years, and every one of them, they attacked me.

00:29:53.000 And every time I said, you know, I just gotta keep going.

00:29:56.000 Even recently, look at the last 45 days of my life, I was thrown out of the corporation that I founded and was the chairman of, and I said to myself, I just gotta keep going.

00:30:08.000 I gotta start another organization.

00:30:10.000 And this is perhaps a life lesson embodied in the poem by Rudyard Kipling, If.

00:30:16.000 If you can see the things you gave your life to broken and rebuild them with worn out tools.

00:30:20.000 I've been through this a number of times.

00:30:23.000 Arrested, raided, sued, falsely accused, exonerated, vindicated.

00:30:28.000 But you just sort of have to keep going.

00:30:31.000 And I wish Andrew was alive.

00:30:33.000 He died March 1st, 2012.

00:30:35.000 I wish he was alive to see some of these things.

00:30:37.000 But you were very close with him.

00:30:39.000 I was close with him.

00:30:40.000 And for the first three years of my journey, he was by my side when it came to this.

00:30:45.000 Obviously, you know, the personal attacks are one thing.

00:30:48.000 You've also been attacked legally.

00:30:49.000 I mean, you've had law enforcement come after you.

00:30:52.000 So maybe you can discuss what that's like, because, you know, fortunately for me, I've not yet been attacked by law enforcement, but, you know, you never know.

00:30:58.000 So give me some advice on this.

00:31:00.000 How do you handle it when the FBI comes a-raiding?

00:31:02.000 Oh, man.

00:31:04.000 You see it in the movies with the blue jackets and the guns, and I've been through it.

00:31:11.000 It's sort of like a sort of Damocles.

00:31:13.000 I don't know if you know what that is, but it's like you're a sort of Damocles is where when they raid you and they take your phones.

00:31:19.000 And this was over the Ashley Biden diary.

00:31:21.000 Someone had sent us this diary belonging to the president's daughter.

00:31:25.000 We did buy the rights to it.

00:31:27.000 It's not illegal for a journalist to buy the rights to something.

00:31:30.000 It's controversial.

00:31:31.000 Perhaps it's some decry the ethics of it.

00:31:34.000 The National Enquirer buys news.

00:31:36.000 Some people in Britain do.

00:31:38.000 But it's also not illegal for a journalist to publish material that was allegedly stolen by somebody else.

00:31:43.000 It's protected by Nikki DeVopper, the Pentagon Papers case.

00:31:48.000 They claimed it was stolen.

00:31:52.000 I didn't think it was.

00:31:53.000 Even if it was, we didn't steal it.

00:31:55.000 But in any event, the FBI comes a-knocking at 6 a.m.

00:31:58.000 They bang on your door, right?

00:32:01.000 And it's the loudest bang you'll ever hear in your life.

00:32:04.000 It is a terrifying sound.

00:32:06.000 Those fists banging.

00:32:09.000 They had a battering ram.

00:32:11.000 I ran to the door at 6 a.m.

00:32:12.000 This was November 6, 2021.

00:32:16.000 And they had maglite flashlights in my eyes, blinding me.

00:32:19.000 It's 6 a.m.

00:32:20.000 on a Saturday.

00:32:21.000 You're asleep.

00:32:22.000 You're awoken from your slumber.

00:32:25.000 And they come in.

00:32:27.000 And one of the things that struck me about the FBI was I actually believe that the majority of these people are really good people.

00:32:35.000 I believe the people at the top are fairly compromised.

00:32:39.000 And what struck me about their body language is they realized That they were not doing the right thing.

00:32:46.000 And I think some of them had a conscience.

00:32:47.000 And I know that because one of them blew the whistle.

00:32:51.000 A guy named Kyle Serafin, FBI agent, leaked some documents to us from a different source showing us that the FBI knew we were a news media.

00:33:03.000 So, my advice.

00:33:06.000 Yeah, I've been attacked a lot legally.

00:33:08.000 You have to have good lawyers.

00:33:11.000 You can't let lawyers stop the creative process, but you have to do the right thing, and you have to have backbone, and you have to have integrity.

00:33:23.000 And even when you do the right thing and have integrity and behave ethically, they'll accuse you of doing the wrong thing, and you have to stand your ground.

00:33:30.000 In this matter with the FBI, the ACLU, Ben, the American Civil Liberties Union has defended me.

00:33:36.000 That should shock your audience.

00:33:40.000 Which consists of Wolf Blitzer, Andrea Mitchell, has defended me.

00:33:45.000 And why are they defending me?

00:33:46.000 Because they do the exact same thing I do.

00:33:49.000 They publish material that was stolen.

00:33:52.000 They print the Pentagon Papers.

00:33:54.000 What's his name?

00:33:55.000 The Politico guy, Josh Gerstein, published the Roe vs. Wade documents.

00:34:01.000 Politico covered this favorably.

00:34:03.000 Do you think Josh Gerstein wants to be raided by the feds for publishing the leaked?

00:34:08.000 And by the way, I defended, I may not like the leaker, we may not like the person in the Supreme Court to leak that, but I defend the right of the journalists to publish the leaked material.

00:34:19.000 That is a very important American tradition.

00:34:23.000 And I think a lot of these left-wing journalists are, Ben, they're afraid that the three-letter agencies might come for them.

00:34:32.000 So in a strange twist of fate, they defended us.

00:34:36.000 And I think that's actually a very hopeful thing.

00:34:38.000 And it's a good sign that we're not yet fully lost in society.

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00:35:40.000 So James, you talked a lot about what Andrew would call walking through the fire, you know, keep on going even when they're firing the arrows at you.

00:35:46.000 But over the course of 20 years, obviously, I have my own career regrets, things that I wish I had done differently.

00:35:52.000 Well, what are some of the things that, you know, looking back, you wish that you had done differently or known so that you would have done something differently?

00:35:57.000 You know, that's a really good question and goes to the issue of regret.

00:36:01.000 Because a lot of the things that happen to us form who we are.

00:36:04.000 Like the Louisiana thing, this is another Long story, which I'll try to summarize in 30 seconds.

00:36:10.000 I was arrested in a federal building in 2010.

00:36:12.000 Remember that one with Mary Landrieu?

00:36:15.000 And I spent three years on federal probation for a misdemeanor.

00:36:18.000 Class B misdemeanor.

00:36:20.000 Which I didn't commit.

00:36:22.000 And I was sort of like pitying myself for three years.

00:36:27.000 Oh, I wish I never did that.

00:36:29.000 This wasn't me.

00:36:30.000 I was in a federal building with a camera.

00:36:32.000 I was invited in her office.

00:36:34.000 I showed my ID.

00:36:36.000 There was nothing illegal about What I did, but it was entry by false pretense and misdemeanor because I was covertly recording.

00:36:44.000 And I often for many years, I thought I wish that never happened.

00:36:47.000 But it was actually the best thing that ever happened to me for three different reasons.

00:36:53.000 A, I really was started sending cameras to other people as opposed to doing everything myself because I was forced to.

00:37:01.000 B, it humbled me without destroying me.

00:37:05.000 It's very, very rare for a man to be Humbled but not ruined.

00:37:10.000 I think the same thing sort of happened to me in the last 45 days.

00:37:14.000 And it really, really taught me about the intricacies of law and how to manage attorneys.

00:37:21.000 I didn't complete law school.

00:37:22.000 I didn't go to Harvard Law School.

00:37:23.000 I went to a small law school and dropped out after a year, but I feel like I'm an attorney.

00:37:30.000 I think all good journalists sort of have to be lawyers because you have to, when you're in the field, you have to Do the IRAC issue rule analysis conclusion while you're recording.

00:37:41.000 You have to understand the dynamics.

00:37:45.000 I've spent more time researching First Amendment law than most lawyers.

00:37:49.000 In fact, as of last year, I had 22 outside counsel working for me and four inside counsel.

00:37:55.000 So that process taught me so much.

00:37:58.000 So you say, do you regret it?

00:37:59.000 No.

00:38:01.000 What do I regret?

00:38:02.000 I mean, I will tell you that I've learned a lot from the Project Veritas situation.

00:38:07.000 I never focused on board composition, Ben.

00:38:10.000 I probably should have.

00:38:11.000 I never really focused on what was in my bylaws and my corporation.

00:38:15.000 I probably should have.

00:38:18.000 I'm a very tough man to work for.

00:38:19.000 I'm a very exacting guy.

00:38:22.000 I drive people pretty hard.

00:38:25.000 I push people.

00:38:27.000 But I probably should have done a better job of selecting who is on my board.

00:38:33.000 And I need to make sure that the people that I surround myself with, particularly in an area like at the board or at the top, have really what we call testicular fortitude.

00:38:47.000 and who have a lot of integrity.

00:38:50.000 I built a great production team and a great journalism team.

00:38:53.000 I could have done a better job in those areas.

00:38:54.000 And I learned from it.

00:38:56.000 And because I learned from it, I don't regret it.

00:38:58.000 I just, I'm going to be more effective moving forward.

00:39:01.000 And I think that things are happening for a reason and are happening as they should.

00:39:05.000 So, you know, we talked a little bit before about what it's like to be on the receiving end of the tsunami.

00:39:10.000 On a personal level, obviously, you keep walking forward.

00:39:13.000 On a business level, in your public-facing life, you always have to keep walking forward because the minute you show weakness in the industry that We both share in politics or pretty much any other industry.

00:39:23.000 The minute you show weakness, that's just blood in the water to your enemies and to your opponents.

00:39:27.000 You know, for me on a personal level, one of the things that I've had to do is not only cultivate a thick skin, but also sort of create a bubble around myself that's permeable by people I trust, but not permeable by anybody that I don't.

00:39:36.000 Meaning, you know, I have a wife, I have kids, I have parents, I have siblings, I have a set of close friends.

00:39:41.000 And then, you know, kind of outside of that, you know, all the other opinions sort of don't matter.

00:39:44.000 So on a personal level, What sort of life have you tried to cultivate in order to both protect yourself but also allow for criticisms that you have to hear in order to get better at what you do to permeate?

00:39:55.000 Well, on a professional level, you have to admit mistakes when you make them journalistically.

00:39:59.000 And there's about three or four mistakes I've made in my life, and I've admitted them.

00:40:02.000 I'm talking about journalistic mistakes.

00:40:05.000 Maybe you get the thing wrong, or you misspell the name.

00:40:08.000 So that's that.

00:40:08.000 On a personal level, this is a very interesting point.

00:40:12.000 Trust.

00:40:12.000 You said, use the T word.

00:40:14.000 You said people that you trust.

00:40:17.000 And I know that you know this.

00:40:18.000 In the field that you're in, I'm in, it's very difficult to trust people.

00:40:22.000 What does that word mean?

00:40:24.000 I think it means people say they're loyal, but loyalty almost has a connotation of the mafia or you're loyal to someone.

00:40:33.000 It means to me people who actually wouldn't take a bribe.

00:40:38.000 They're in their soul, they're good people, and they care about you.

00:40:42.000 Like Jordan Peterson, who I know you've been on with, he says it better than I can.

00:40:46.000 He says when you're doing well, they're happy for you.

00:40:51.000 That's very rare.

00:40:54.000 And when the chips are down, they'll have your back.

00:40:56.000 Never trust a man who, when the chips are down, they're going to have your back.

00:41:03.000 And I've been able to see these people.

00:41:04.000 It's like that line in the movie Wall Street, when he says, from the moment I laid my eyes on you, I knew you were going to be successful.

00:41:11.000 And then he says, after the guy was arrested, from the moment I laid my eyes on you, I knew you were no good.

00:41:16.000 So I can't tell you how many times I've seen that, but it's very difficult, Ben, to assess this in a person right away.

00:41:25.000 And again, I haven't done the best job of that always, but these experiences help you.

00:41:30.000 And on a personal level, yeah, it's hard to have really close friends.

00:41:40.000 And people want a piece of you.

00:41:41.000 I know you're aware of this.

00:41:42.000 People want a piece of you.

00:41:43.000 They want a photo with you.

00:41:45.000 It's like, everyone wants a part of you.

00:41:48.000 And it's tough to be a sane, normal human being and give yourself to everyone.

00:41:58.000 So I think it is about surrounding yourself with the right people.

00:42:01.000 And I am proud to say that OMG, okiefmedigroup.com, I think I've succeeded.

00:42:09.000 And at least so far, I've identified 12 people.

00:42:13.000 These are ride-or-die, excellent human beings.

00:42:16.000 Let me tell you one more quick story.

00:42:18.000 We're in a startup right now.

00:42:21.000 We had to sit on the floor here.

00:42:23.000 People were volunteering.

00:42:25.000 One of my guys is a pastor in his real life, and he put the whistleblower's flight on his credit card last week.

00:42:33.000 Luckily, we've been able to pay all the credit cards off because of the subscriptions.

00:42:36.000 These are the sorts of people that you need.

00:42:39.000 You need people who are willing, who are brave, who are just excellent human beings. 0.99

00:42:46.000 I don't know if that makes sense, but you've got to go through the SHIT to figure out who those people are. 0.96

00:42:56.000 So, James, one of the things that people may have noticed about your videos is that some of them have a lot of flair to them, some of them are very provocative. 0.98

00:43:05.000 It's not just going to be watching a CNN broadcast.

00:43:06.000 Sometimes you have humor in there, or you have even song and dance, depending on what you're doing.

00:43:12.000 How do you balance the need to do the journalistic stuff with sort of that creative itch that you want to scratch?

00:43:16.000 Because obviously you've had that for as long as I've known you.

00:43:19.000 Yeah, and some people don't like it, and I understand, and I would say to them that I wouldn't be a storyteller if I didn't have the artistic flair, because this is about storytelling.

00:43:28.000 I'm not motivated by power or politics.

00:43:32.000 I wouldn't even say I'm a political person.

00:43:34.000 I do cover political stories, but I'm really more of a storyteller.

00:43:38.000 That's what motivates me.

00:43:40.000 I'm a thespian.

00:43:41.000 I did Oklahoma last year.

00:43:43.000 People got upset because I took my non-profit staff and brought them down on a tour bus to see me perform.

00:43:50.000 I took three weeks off.

00:43:52.000 I took a paid leave of absence to do that.

00:43:55.000 People got upset about that, but that's who I am.

00:43:57.000 And I don't think there ever would have been a Project Veritas had I not been that way.

00:44:02.000 There wouldn't be an ACORN investigation had I not had that flair.

00:44:05.000 And credit to Hannah.

00:44:06.000 She's the one who came up with it.

00:44:08.000 She had flair, too.

00:44:09.000 Not everyone likes it, but, you know, it's who I am.

00:44:11.000 And if you saw my Advertisement for OMG, I danced.

00:44:19.000 It's just who I am.

00:44:20.000 It's just who I am.

00:44:22.000 So, you know, obviously you look at the political scenario right now, it is a target rich environment if ever there has been one.

00:44:28.000 Elite institutions control more of our lives than ever at any time in certainly my lifetime.

00:44:34.000 Since the pandemic, it seems like every institution has gained consolidated control or more consolidated control.

00:44:39.000 So I'm not asking you to reveal any of the stories that you're going to be researching, but which areas do you think are sort of the targets?

00:44:45.000 If you could put a focus on them, you would.

00:44:48.000 I've been focusing a lot on education over the last year because I think everyone agreed you don't mess with the mama bears.

00:44:54.000 And I think we're so divided in this country morally, politically, every which way.

00:44:59.000 I feel the education issue does unite 85% of people.

00:45:04.000 You just don't abuse kindergartners.

00:45:07.000 So that's one area that I'm passionate about, because I think you shouldn't abuse children.

00:45:11.000 And I think we can unite around the fact that child abuse is wrong.

00:45:16.000 We disagree about what child abuse is, but I think we can unite around the fact that you don't target children. Also the three-letter agencies. I think the federal agencies, I may testify in Congress about the FBI raid. Jim Jordan has written about that with me. And third is the pharmaceutical companies. I think we need to stay on the Pfizer beat and some of what they're doing.

00:45:43.000 I do think they do some good things.

00:45:46.000 I think the drug companies are needed in some respects, but I think some of the lies that we've exposed, like why are they lying to their consumers about their products?

00:45:53.000 Those are three areas, I think.

00:45:55.000 And if that sounds good to you and you're watching this program and you're a citizen out there, it's not for everybody, but we can ship you a camera.

00:46:02.000 If you go to this website, okifmediagroup.com, we'll help you tell your stories.

00:46:08.000 Because there's a lot of people with a conscience out there that want to do that.

00:46:11.000 Well, that is James O'Keefe.

00:46:12.000 Check out O'KeefeMediaGroup.com.

00:46:14.000 James, really appreciate the time.

00:46:15.000 Congrats on the new enterprise and look forward to seeing what you do next.

00:46:18.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:46:19.000 Thanks, Ben.

00:46:20.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Mathis Glover.

00:46:30.000 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

00:46:32.000 Host production is managed by Matt Kemp.

00:46:34.000 Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta.

00:46:35.000 Hair, makeup, and wardrobe is by Fabiola Cristina.

00:46:38.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

00:46:41.000 Executive in charge of production, David Wormus.

00:46:43.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

00:46:45.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 19, 2023

How Far Would You Go to Find The Truth?

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