The Great America Show - JAMES O’KEEFE ON DEEP DEMOCRAT CORRUPTION & EPSTEIN

00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America Podcast with Lou Dobbs,

00:00:04.200 always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.

00:00:09.180 And now, here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.

00:00:14.480 Hello, everybody. Great to have you with us for this edition of the Great America Show,

00:00:18.360 dedicated to truth, justice, and the American way. Interesting times in which we live,

00:00:23.840 the need for independent, objective journalism has never been greater.

00:00:27.500 Even the left in America has moved further left and far more committed to ever larger government

00:00:34.580 and authoritarianism throughout our society. It brings us to the subject of one James O'Keefe.

00:00:41.720 He's the leader of Project Veritas, an organization dedicated to truth in America, particularly

00:00:49.820 American politics, investigative journalist. He is a young man who's been committed to journalism

00:00:55.820 for most of his life. You know him primarily from his exploits as a video journalist, undercover

00:01:02.000 journalism. His brand of journalism has produced great stories and great public service. And by the

00:01:08.840 way, it doesn't get better than that for anyone who calls himself or herself a journalist. Whether

00:01:15.240 it's the famous ACORN expose that James led, that in the Obama administration, it brought down a national,

00:01:24.740 nationwide community organizing group that was far, far more than that. And James will be here to tell

00:01:31.580 us all about that. Or the undercover expose of ABC News anchor Amy Rovac telling people in the studio her

00:01:39.900 bosses had spiked her report on pedophile multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Well, here with us now is James

00:01:50.120 O'Keefe, who has authored a brand new book. And it is called, it's one of my favorite titles, James,

00:01:56.620 American Muckraker, Rethinking Journalism in the 21st Century. It's great to have you with us.

00:02:02.720 What are your thoughts as a video journalist, an undercover investigative journalist,

00:02:12.520 as we look out on this body politic and our society so riven with corruption and an absolute

00:02:22.700 climate of fear in too many quarters of our country? Well, Lou, this book took me about five

00:02:30.860 years to write. And it was a collection of stories from people from a glimpse into guerrilla reporting

00:02:38.680 as seen by the muckrakers who defend press freedom in a brave new world of video journalism. How do we

00:02:43.300 define muckraker? I know that's something that you referred to yourself or others referred to you when

00:02:47.820 you got started in your profession. I think a muckraker or an investigative reporter is one who makes

00:02:52.780 public disclosures, who publicizes things that powerful people do not want published for the wrong

00:02:59.740 reasons. And often today, journalism has become too much about relaying information from established

00:03:07.100 figures that they want published. So acting as ombudsman or spokespeople for the government,

00:03:12.940 running towards the people with a megaphone, amplifying what people in government tell them,

00:03:18.580 and corporations too. You have pharmaceutical companies now are just completely in harmony

00:03:24.900 with the paper of record. And that, don't take my word for it, you know, it's self-evident in the

00:03:31.160 commercial breaks on these news stations. So there's a lot of things that I write about in this book,

00:03:36.080 economics, privacy, deception, litigation, suffering, you know, is a theme that is throughout the book

00:03:43.540 because it does require sacrifice to tell the truth. So we need to really have a reckoning about

00:03:49.180 journalism and, and, and who were allowed to do journalism and the rights of citizens to do journalism,

00:03:55.300 which is something that is written about extensively in this book, American Muckraker.

00:03:59.980 Well, as, as you know, journalism done best is, is tough slutting. It's awful hard work. 1.00

00:04:08.580 There are not many people who are interested in the hard work of journalism. It's one of the disappointing

00:04:14.540 things to me. And, uh, uh, my craft is an advocacy journalist, uh, practicing and cable news for many

00:04:22.840 years. Uh, young people would walk through the door. They'd want to be a television star. They didn't

00:04:28.740 want to have to be, uh, you know, getting their hands dirty and digging, uh, digging through the research

00:04:34.940 and producing great stories and great exposés. Uh, what, what do you think of the quality of the people

00:04:43.580 coming out of schools, uh, in this country right now and their preparation to join for crying out

00:04:50.740 loud, 90% of the jobs are corporate media jobs. Uh, and by that, I mean the cable news networks,

00:04:58.420 the broadcast network news divisions, as well as newspapers and, and websites. Well, I, I don't know

00:05:06.420 what they're teaching in journalism schools. I would quote the late Mike Wallace, who said,

00:05:11.720 you learn more on three months on the job than you do in a journalism school. I think you would back

00:05:16.540 that statement up. I certainly learned how to do it. I started a newspaper at Rutgers, the state

00:05:21.220 university of New Jersey, and I would do local reporting, like how much my professors were making

00:05:25.960 or, you know, the ratio of political party and in the history department, I would walk up to

00:05:31.660 professors with a microphone. I learned a lot. I learned by doing, and I think there's a lot of good

00:05:35.740 people that try to go into the field, but I would reference this, this chapter in this book,

00:05:40.580 American muckraker about whistleblowers, like Carrie porch, who said that his dream had become

00:05:44.860 a nightmare when he worked, when he went to work for CNN or Patrick Davis, a 25 year veteran of the

00:05:50.500 network. He was the director of field operations, the manager of field operations saying, quote,

00:05:55.440 I hate what we have become unquote. He said that he did not know that he was being recorded.

00:06:00.720 So there's a lot of good people that, that think they're getting into a profession that wants to

00:06:05.980 tell the truth, quote, without fear or favor to quote the New York times, regardless of party or

00:06:11.380 sex, sex or factions. But what they uncover is that everything they thought they knew about the

00:06:18.640 world turns out not to be true. And the qualities it takes, the type of person it takes to do this

00:06:24.400 work. You're right. You can't do it for fame. You know, you don't want to do it for fame. And if,

00:06:29.960 and if you are doing it for fame, you're going to be sorely, uh, humbled because all of these

00:06:35.860 organizations that have the power to humiliate you, the tech, uh, uh, Washington post New York

00:06:42.160 times oligarchy. And by the way, the New York times is very powerful by virtue of the fact that

00:06:46.680 Twitter, Instagram, Google, and Facebook prefer that news in their algorithm that power is given

00:06:53.060 to them by the tech companies.

00:06:54.800 And by that news, you're referring to left-wing propaganda.

00:06:58.480 I'm referring to what they refer to themselves as articles. News articles are preferred by the

00:07:04.680 tech algorithms. And if Lou Dobbs tweets out something that's not as preferred in the algorithms

00:07:09.800 as if a national security report, the New York times.

00:07:13.080 Well, let's go, let's go to, let's go to a couple of words you use. One is you use the word oligarch.

00:07:17.820 We don't hear many people use that word in this country. That's reserved for billionaires in,

00:07:22.580 uh, Ukraine, uh, Russia, Europe, uh, even Asia. Uh, we, we refer sort of deferent, not sort of

00:07:32.180 deferentially, uh, uh, uh, we it's often used in the most servile of manner, uh, by journalists.

00:07:39.180 They talk about billionaires as if they are somehow, uh, God's gift to society instead of, uh, an oligarch,

00:07:47.380 which is what they really are. And when you talk about big tech, you talk about social media

00:07:51.960 you talk about the business round table, the chamber of commerce and wall street. You're

00:07:56.760 talking about oligarchs who have an agenda that has very little to do with American, uh,

00:08:03.340 interests, whether foreign or domestic. Well, and the oligarchy effectively, the newspapers

00:08:08.900 have been decimated. When you got your start in journalism, there were newspapers. I mean, I

00:08:12.700 read about this in my research. The Chicago sun times was a famous

00:08:16.880 muckraking newspaper in Chicago. And they did this. You think that I'm elaborate with

00:08:21.920 our undercover stuff. They did this thing where they bought a bar in 1977, I believe. And they

00:08:27.620 called it the mirage. And the journalists, uh, uh, got jobs as bartenders and covertly photographed

00:08:34.500 everything. And they, they think that they got, they did that. It was a quite elaborate deception,

00:08:39.580 but it uncovered some amazing findings. They, they caught city inspectors, bribing,

00:08:45.320 beginning bribe. They, they caught people being paid off and, and, and it really reformed the city

00:08:50.940 of Chicago. And maybe if we had that stuff being exposed, Chicago wouldn't be in the situation it's

00:08:55.400 in, but something changed, you know, in the decades since I think that people were reluctant to do that.

00:09:01.360 I think that people for a couple of reasons, I think economics, it's too expensive to do that type

00:09:05.740 of reporting litigation. We saw that with ABC versus food line in 1992, when they were sued,

00:09:11.400 when ABC news was sued by food line grocery, after ABC news recorded, uh, some things, they got jobs at

00:09:18.960 the grocery store. Now, ABC news won that lawsuit on appeal, but it really deterred, uh, corporations

00:09:25.640 from spending the money. Uh, and oftentimes investigative reporting is a loss leader on a company's balance

00:09:31.620 sheet. You don't even make money doing this. It's very expensive and you often lose profit doing it.

00:09:37.440 That's why we're a nonprofit. It's why Jeff Bezos owns the Washington post. Uh, it is why Disney owns

00:09:46.600 ABC news. Uh, you go through this, they're the only companies with that kind of concentrated economic

00:09:54.200 power, uh, who can afford, uh, the, at least the pretense of journalism. Uh, there are exceptions.

00:10:02.760 Uh, there are some good, uh, people within that organization, but overall corporate media is a

00:10:08.480 hack's paradise, uh, and a place where you will either carry out the company line or you will be

00:10:14.620 carried out as they say. Yeah, it's, it's, um, it's definitely something that I've thought

00:10:21.060 a lot about. And, um, I think there's a, there's a lot of, I spent so much time wrestling with the

00:10:29.580 ethics of what we do and the, the, the rub on us is that we're, you know, we're criminals where we, 0.94

00:10:34.840 we were scum, we, we, we break the law. It's well, there was more ethics in this book. There's more

00:10:40.720 self-introspection in this book about where the boundaries are on what we do than any textbook in

00:10:46.900 journalism in America. And it's forged through experience. It's not, well, let's get to the

00:10:50.860 let's get to the fun of journalism too, because it is, after all, it's not a profession. You don't

00:10:55.720 have to have an, uh, uh, an MD, a PhD to be a journalist or to understand journalism. It's about

00:11:02.840 telling stories and reporting facts and bringing truth when possible, but never dedicating yourself

00:11:09.260 to truth, dedicate yourself to the facts and you'll find the truth. Right? So why don't we talk about

00:11:14.380 that great exploit? And that's ACORN. How is it that you brought down, uh, in large measure, you,

00:11:22.640 uh, uh, ACORN, uh, in the Obama administration, when community organizing was at its height,

00:11:28.740 a, a much sought after, uh, label, uh, for anyone who wanted to work, uh, in politics, particularly.

00:11:37.680 It was, it was an amazing story that is hard to believe as truth is stranger than fiction. I got

00:11:43.860 a message from a girl on Facebook. This was 12 years ago. I had just come off fresh exposing

00:11:48.420 Planned Parenthood in California. And, and I just, this young woman I never met before

00:11:53.200 traded some messages on Facebook and said, what if you wanted to ACORN as a, as a, as a prostitute,

00:11:58.700 sort of like a secret shopper, you'd go in there and say, you want to start a prostitution business. 0.88

00:12:03.200 And I replied by saying, Hey, there should probably be a pimp with this, with this foe 0.99

00:12:07.960 hooker. And then I said, well, are you wanting to go in there? And she said, yes, she was 20 years old. 0.99

00:12:12.900 We had no money. We had no organization really. I mean, I had done some things, but I was broke

00:12:17.500 and we just drove around Baltimore, DC, New York, Brooklyn. And we recorded all these government

00:12:24.980 workers. They were getting money from the government. They were an organization that was allocated

00:12:29.220 5 billion in the stimulus plan. And we presented ourselves as criminals, as people who had underage

00:12:36.040 hookers. And they counseled us, they gave us tax advice on how to disguise the hookers on our tax 0.81

00:12:42.680 forms. And it was so shocking. I mean, these tapes are, are something like, you know, Borat meets 60

00:12:48.600 minutes. It was just absolutely shocking. And, and after the tapes came out, the media, this was an

00:12:55.060 education for me. This is again, September of 2009, the media, particularly CNN said, well,

00:13:01.820 these are just isolated incidents. And then the next day we release another tape and then they

00:13:05.500 would say, well, that's just two. And then the next day we release a third tape. So we had to fight the

00:13:09.760 media. And for me, it was like, why are you guys, why are you attacking me? Like, we're, aren't we

00:13:13.960 supposed to be on the same team? I mean, if government people are doing something wrong, is it your

00:13:19.540 allegiance to president Obama, who was an attorney for ACOR? The New York times had spiked.

00:13:25.100 Their front page story about ACORN. Well, you know it was. You know it was. There's no speculation

00:13:29.520 about it now. But Congress. It was exactly that. Congress defunded ACORN within a week of these

00:13:35.400 exposures. And the Senate voted 83 to 7 to cut off the funding. The Senate was then controlled by

00:13:41.480 Democrats, which is unthinkable today. But I think it was a case where Obama and his allies in politics

00:13:48.520 wanted to distance themselves from what was being found out. And it was the Abu Ghrave of the great 0.74

00:13:54.300 society. It was a terrible indictment on journalism. John Stewart of The Daily Show, who's far less

00:13:59.880 partisan than Trevor Noah now is. Even John Stewart said, where the hell, I'm quoting him, where the

00:14:05.740 hell were you journalists? Why does it take these two kids with a camcorder to do what you should be

00:14:10.060 doing? And that really is the thing. They have to attack me because our very existence is an indictment

00:14:16.400 against them. Well, it certainly is. And it's been great. To me, it's been great fun. The Jeffrey

00:14:25.180 Epstein story, the Amy Roback story at ABC announcing for all the world that the bosses had spiked the story

00:14:38.060 on Epstein. Tell us about that and how that played out. Well, this was an amazing, amazing story.

00:14:48.280 Amy Roback is the anchor for Good Morning America. And she has a lav mic on, the little microphone on

00:14:53.160 your lapel. And she was talking during commercial break. This is not on the air. And we had a source

00:14:59.700 within ABC News that gave us a copy of that recording. And this woman, she's a blonde woman that works at ABC

00:15:06.020 News. In the morning, she's bemoaning the fact that her corporate bosses told her they wouldn't run the

00:15:12.140 Epstein story because, to quote Amy Roback, they wanted to protect Bill Clinton and Andrew and the

00:15:19.220 British royal family. And they say, well, we don't want to we don't want to burn our sources with Kate

00:15:25.020 and Will, you know, because the ABC News is too busy cozying up, again, to quote Amy Roback, cozying up to

00:15:33.120 these people rather than investigating them. And this is very credible tape. It's actually one of

00:15:37.120 the most amazing pieces of footage you'll ever see, because these anchors present themselves one

00:15:42.560 way. And then in the commercial break, they're just they're just letting it all loose. And this clip

00:15:46.620 was so powerful that it forced people who don't like Project Veritas to praise Project Veritas.

00:15:53.960 We had a lot of people that attack us that were like, whoa, look at this piece of footage. And it was

00:15:58.600 presented to us, Lou, by an insider within ABC News, who, by the way, Lou, that person still works for ABC

00:16:06.260 News. We protected that person's identity. And it's an incredible story of whistleblowing. And also, obviously,

00:16:13.000 the Jeff Epstein story, which was spiked, which was canceled by corporate ABC News.

00:16:18.600 Well, again, just further illustration of the commitment by corporate media, corporate news media. It's not to the

00:16:27.900 story. It's to protecting the access and the company line. I want to turn to right now.

00:16:37.520 What is Project Veritas' standing now? Because you speak sometimes rather defensively, James, about

00:16:45.000 being hated and reviled. And I know that you've got a lot of scars, because we're always, all of us,

00:16:51.500 no matter what, the walk of life. We're victims as well as beneficiaries of our experience. But don't

00:16:59.160 you sense that Veritas is now highly regarded, well-respected, and is the subject of considerable

00:17:09.120 gratitude for the service you've provided all of us over the course of these years?

00:17:14.520 That's a great question. The first chapter of this book is called Suffering, or rather the preface

00:17:18.680 is called Suffering. And I think to be a journalist, or to be any type of truth teller, you do have to

00:17:24.640 suffer. But I also believe that you're going to suffer no matter what you do. Because if you don't

00:17:29.300 follow your conscience, if you don't tell the truth, you'll suffer in a different way.

00:17:32.380 Yeah.

00:17:32.700 And I think that, and Laura Logan, a friend of mine, once said to me, and I've written this in this book,

00:17:37.780 that, yes, you go through a lot of hell. I mean, I've been incarcerated. I've been sued. I've been

00:17:44.260 vindicated, obviously. But I had the FBI raid my home in November. I've not been charged with any

00:17:49.640 crimes. But this form of intimidation, you do kind of enter this period of grief and uncertainty. And

00:17:57.380 for at least a little while, you go through a lot of inconvenience and pain. But I think that

00:18:04.740 that engenders trust with people. People come to me and come to our reporters that work here

00:18:10.340 because they trust us. And we don't settle lawsuits, even though it costs us a ton of money.

00:18:16.640 I think the mock raker has to be prepared to suffer. It's a prerequisite for growth. It compels 0.99

00:18:21.440 transformation and self-reflection. And if you continue going, after you go through this,

00:18:28.200 you send a message to other people that they can do it too. I've become too well known. But

00:18:32.640 there's a vision here where there's thousands of these muckrakers that come out. And so two becomes

00:18:38.780 four and four becomes eight. And the same experiences that tortured you do engender trust with those

00:18:43.940 people. And they continue to do it. And it's really an amazing thing to witness. And I think,

00:18:49.600 Lou, you're right. I think that when after the FBI raid, it actually kind of strangely helped us

00:18:54.040 because the guy that came to us last week with these documents inside the Department of Defense

00:18:59.620 never would have given us those documents had it not been for all these attacks on us

00:19:04.960 by these powerful forces.

00:19:07.260 See, one of the things that I, James, that surprised me over the past five years with the Trump

00:19:13.680 administration, President Trump was the subject of FBI investigations before he was elected.

00:19:20.120 And now the subject of further legal persecution throughout. Do you know, I don't know of a

00:19:27.820 single whistleblower who stood up in either the Justice Department, the FBI, the Department of

00:19:34.100 Defense, the national security apparatus. I don't know of a single, single whistleblower who had the guts

00:19:41.480 to stand up against the deep state. Do you?

00:19:43.520 Well, you just raised the most important issue. I know sources inside the Justice Department and a

00:19:51.180 lot of them take an oath. For example, the Marine Corps major that provided the, I'm sorry, he did

00:19:56.080 not provide the documents to me, but he issued an on the record statement to us. This is Joe Murphy,

00:20:02.740 Marine Corps fellow at DARPA. What he told me was there are good people inside. And I believe him

00:20:08.780 that are trying to reform the institutions from within.

00:20:12.160 Yeah, I don't believe them, James. I got to stop you right there and interrupt you.

00:20:17.260 You know, the first job of a journalist is be skeptical. I've heard that the FBI is full of good

00:20:23.080 people. I've heard that there are a lot of people in the Pentagon who care deeply about this country

00:20:28.220 and have committed themselves to service in uniform. And God bless them and thank them for that.

00:20:33.120 But the fact that no one stands up for truth within that organization, we fight long wars,

00:20:40.420 21 years in Afghanistan, a third world country. And what we get is what we saw as President Biden

00:20:49.900 ordered a surrender and instant retreat. I don't think good people will put up with that. I don't

00:20:58.820 think that, you know, good people do the right thing, whether it's coming to you with the story,

00:21:05.000 whether it's understanding that ours is a craft and you have to work and you have to dig and you have to

00:21:11.560 hit ethical standards and boundaries that you honor and respect. It's just it's about good people

00:21:20.740 and good people do good things. They don't sit in silence while people are persecuted for five years.

00:21:26.500 I think your point is very valid. And I write about this extensively in the book. I think

00:21:31.740 people fear losing their pensions, right? I mean, but the tenant, I mean, you're talking to a man who

00:21:36.140 was raided by the FBI. And I think that half of the people who were in that my apartment that morning

00:21:40.540 are not bad people. But I think you're right. I think they're scared. I think they're afraid of

00:21:45.620 giving up their pensions and their mortgages, blah, blah, blah. And effectively, as Americans,

00:21:52.200 we have to ask ourselves, what are we willing to sacrifice? Because they apparently will sacrifice

00:21:58.120 anything when you stand and will allow a good, innocent and everyone in that bureau knew that

00:22:04.960 the president of the United States had done nothing with which he was charged. And to let him go forward

00:22:12.080 in an impeachment effort that was absolutely scurrilous on the part of the Dems and to continue to kiss 0.78

00:22:18.560 their butts and grovel as agents of the FBI tells me we don't have an FBI. We have people who are,

00:22:29.380 you know, they're sitting simply sucking at the public trough.

00:22:34.040 We do have 120,000 people who work at the Department of Justice, and I'm calling on 0.81

00:22:39.440 people to blow the whistle. And I think they will, Lou. I'm a little more hopeful. It's horrible what

00:22:44.900 is happening. I'm not about hope. And I am about the facts. And the facts are that they haven't stood

00:22:51.360 up and not one single person stepped forward. And that is a blight on the FBI from which I don't know

00:22:59.680 that they can ever recover. It's not just their own corruption. It's their cowardice. These are people

00:23:06.040 defending the country for crying out loud. It's, to me, is just appalling.

00:23:13.500 Well, I am, I agree with you, and I hope we do something about it. The stories in this book,

00:23:19.940 American Muckraker, show people who do and lose their livelihoods but survive. There's life after

00:23:24.960 whistleblowing. And I just hope more people can come out, just read their stories and understand what

00:23:31.220 it's going to take, because we, hopefully, we can prevent society's collapse with truth-tellers.

00:23:37.100 Well, we'll do our part, but people have to actually do, and not simply say. And that is the reason we all

00:23:46.500 need to stand up when we're challenged. And the one good thing about being in this craft is, by God, you find

00:23:53.200 out whether or not you've got the guts to tell the truth and to suffer the consequences, because there are

00:23:59.300 always consequences. You and I both know it from personal experience. And I thank you for doing so

00:24:05.140 throughout your career, James. The book is American Muckraker, and that is James O'Keefe and Project

00:24:12.400 Veritas. We recommend the book to you highly. James, thanks for being with us today. Stay strong, my friend.

00:24:19.180 Thank you, Lou. Talk soon.

00:24:20.220 Join us again tomorrow for the Great America Podcast. Stay in the fight. Truth, justice,

00:24:25.600 and the American way will prevail against all enemies, against all odds.

The Great America Show - January 31, 2022

JAMES O’KEEFE ON DEEP DEMOCRAT CORRUPTION & EPSTEIN

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