The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - 135. High-Risk Whistleblowing ｜ James O' Keefe of Project Veritas

00:00:00.260 And somehow, within minutes of this happening, the New York Times knows what I'm holding in my hand.

00:00:07.760 They know the subject of the secret grand jury subpoena.

00:00:11.200 How the hell do they know that?

00:00:13.700 Of course, the New York Times is talking to, coordinating with, working with the FBI.

00:00:20.020 And that's why I wrote this book.

00:00:21.720 What?

00:00:22.360 Because I know this sounds crazy.

00:00:24.080 It sounds like science fiction.

00:00:25.280 It's not science fiction.

00:00:26.340 This is my life.

00:00:27.140 This is real.

00:00:27.820 This is truth.

00:00:28.420 This is the reality.

00:00:29.500 And you need to understand the reality you're living in. The New York Times and the FBI

00:00:34.780 are working together in a world when journalists are supposed to speak truth to power.

00:00:42.080 They're representing the power.

00:00:47.600 Welcome to the Michaela Peterson podcast. This is episode 135 featuring Project Veritas CEO and

00:00:55.580 founder, James O'Keefe. James is a self-described guerrilla journalist who organizes and performs

00:01:02.500 undercover investigations to expose corruption in both the public and private sectors.

00:01:08.060 He's involved in a lot of scandals, mostly with Democrats. Twitter suspended his account

00:01:12.980 in April last year, but have since let him join back. You can't tag him on Instagram either.

00:01:19.320 Undeterred, James has a new book, American Muckraker, which describes some of the

00:01:25.140 resignations, arrests, and FBI raids he's been involved in since the birth of Project Veritas.

00:01:32.000 James is definitely a muckraker. I hope you enjoy this episode. If you do, please consider

00:01:36.960 subscribing. Before we get started, I have a cybersecurity question for you. Do you ever use

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00:02:55.140 James O'Keefe. Welcome to my podcast. Great to be here. Thank you so much for coming to Nashville

00:03:02.300 and seeing me in person. This is amazing. Yeah, this is great. Well, you're here to discuss

00:03:08.040 this American muckraker. That's right. But before we get started, probably for anyone who doesn't 0.71

00:03:15.960 know who you are, can you give a brief background about who you are and what it is you do?

00:03:19.620 Well, I'm the founder of a group called Project Veritas. And what we do is we're a group of investigative journalists. We've been around for about 12 years and we go around, usually undercover, catching people in the act, doing waste, fraud, abuse, corruption.

00:03:35.400 and recently our model has shifted to whistleblowing so people on the inside of these

00:03:41.060 institutions come to us usually with documents or recordings irrefutable proof of fraud or abuse or

00:03:47.980 lying or hypocrisy we used to go undercover to try to get on the inside but now there's just a

00:03:54.520 lot of these people on the inside that come to us they come to our tip line and we then send our

00:04:00.140 undercover people out to corroborate what they found. And we've done stories, you name it,

00:04:05.340 we've done stories on it. And you name the institution, we probably have people inside

00:04:10.720 that institution trying to blow the whistle. Our tagline is be brave, do something. And we try to

00:04:15.320 encourage people to not be afraid. That is crazy. How did you get started doing that kind of thing?

00:04:22.340 Well, it's kind of a long story, but in a nutshell, I, I'm 37. Um, I, when I was a teenager,

00:04:31.060 I went to college in New Jersey. I'm from New Jersey. And, um, I, I, I remember at a relatively

00:04:38.040 young age, I looked at the media and I was reading the New York times every day front to back.

00:04:43.720 And I felt there was something off about the way the information was presented.

00:04:48.380 things were not as they seemed and often rarely as they should be i didn't know what to do about it

00:04:55.840 but i went to college and i was surrounded by professors who were avowedly communist and it

00:05:03.000 kind of i guess it could radicalize me a bit political correctness i was really outraged by

00:05:07.780 so i decided to do this sort of stunt journalism and i was pretty shy at the time i was like 19

00:05:14.380 years old. And I decided to ban Lucky Charms on the grounds they're racist against my Irish

00:05:20.760 heritage. I did so as a form of satire, like sort of Borat meets 60 Minutes. But they took me

00:05:28.100 seriously. This is in 2004. Now, irony is a little dead these days. But at the time, it was funny.

00:05:33.780 And the dean of the university took it seriously and told me that they would indeed remove Lucky

00:05:38.420 Charms. This is the first sort of hidden camera. Wait, what year? What year was this?

00:05:41.360 This is actually St. Patrick's Day, 2005.

00:05:43.680 Okay.

00:05:44.420 Yeah.

00:05:45.120 So that was the genesis of this technique of exposing them for who they are, getting them on videotape being who they are.

00:05:54.240 Therefore, no explanation is required.

00:05:57.000 It just makes sense to the viewer.

00:05:59.420 And that's what we try to do at Veritas.

00:06:01.200 It's cinema verite.

00:06:02.200 It's direct.

00:06:02.980 You don't have to trust my interpretation of the events.

00:06:06.160 You just show people the reality.

00:06:09.040 Okay.

00:06:09.340 Okay. So have you been censored at all? Because if what you're doing is going out and trying to

00:06:15.360 expose the truth, so you're just, it's all video footage, that kind of? Yeah. Has that been censored

00:06:20.800 on any platforms? Oh, yeah. We're removed on Twitter. I'm banned on Twitter. Project Veritas

00:06:26.240 is banned on Twitter. You can't tag me on Instagram. It says I've been spreading, quote,

00:06:30.220 false information about COVID. But the thing about that that's interesting is that anything

00:06:35.400 we've broken on COVID the last few months has been Pfizer executives speaking out of their own

00:06:39.700 mouths. I didn't make these statements. We quoted a Pfizer executive saying that your antibodies are

00:06:46.120 stronger than their own vaccine. That was a Pfizer scientist on Hidden Camera. We broke a story from

00:06:51.280 Vanessa Gelman, a director at Pfizer Pharmaceutical, saying you should not tell people about fetal

00:06:57.940 cells, human fetal cells used in the development of the vaccine. So we report on what these people

00:07:04.000 are saying, and they ban me for quoting them. I don't know why they're not banning people making

00:07:09.860 these statements. Yeah. So we're censored, but it really hasn't stopped us. The story we did last

00:07:15.300 week on DARPA documents inside the defense department was trending number one on Twitter,

00:07:21.180 even though we were banned. Okay. I want to get into that actually. What is DARPA? I'm so not

00:07:26.560 like well-versed in this kind of information. So what does DARPA stand for?

00:07:31.400 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and they're a division of the Department of Defense

00:07:39.040 in Arlington, Virginia, Washington, D.C. And this was a document that Veritas released last week

00:07:45.900 from a source. And the document stated, it was written by a Marine Corps major,

00:07:51.560 commandant fellow at the Defense Department. So very serious people. And the Marine Corps

00:07:56.320 major argued in this document, which was buried in a top secret share drive, we obtained this

00:08:03.820 document, Michaela, and the document stated that there was gain of function research in March of

00:08:09.260 2018. This group EcoHealth Alliance approached the Department of Defense and the Department

00:08:16.780 of Defense rejected the gain of research proposal because it was too risky. So what is gain of

00:08:22.820 function. Gain of function is research done on COVID, on bat-borne coronaviruses to do research

00:08:30.300 on this thing, to develop this COVID military applications, national security applications.

00:08:37.340 The Department of Defense rejected this proposal on the grounds it was not safe.

00:08:41.740 That's good.

00:08:42.620 That's a good thing. But the document also states that Dr. Anthony Fauci proceeded with the research

00:08:51.540 through NIAID. If that's true, if what this Marine Corps guy is saying inside the Defense

00:08:59.120 Department is true, then Anthony Fauci lied in Congress. So last week, Dr. Fauci brought up

00:09:06.240 these documents in a Senate hearing. And he brought them up. He brought them up.

00:09:11.740 He brought up Project Veritas in his weird New York accent. Veritas. He brought them up and he

00:09:18.200 appeared to authenticate the documents but he questioned what the marine corps was saying

00:09:22.700 major was saying okay a lot to unpack here a lot going on yeah so did he suggest that

00:09:29.780 so the documents were real but the what the guy was lying right he what he said was something to

00:09:36.700 the effect of i have not seen that proposal from uh to darpa but the eco health alliance proposal

00:09:44.120 to DARPA may have been different than the EcoHealth Alliance proposal to NIAID. So I think

00:09:50.640 he was probably playing a semantics game there. And what we want Anthony Fauci to do is release

00:09:56.020 these documents. The public has a right to know at this point. And if Anthony Fauci does not

00:10:00.880 release the document, then there's a good chance that an organization like Project Veritas might

00:10:05.720 release the document vis-a-vis a whistleblower. Wow. Just like the one that was just released.

00:10:11.260 These are not, these documents are not authorized to be released.

00:10:14.200 And if you do a FOIA request, this information is often redacted.

00:10:18.440 And this is really belies the mission of what we're trying to accomplish.

00:10:23.060 We think that government is in an advanced state of sclerosis where there's no, you can't

00:10:30.560 legislate, judges can't solve these problems.

00:10:32.840 You can't, you can't get FOIA requests to get the documents.

00:10:36.500 You need whistleblowers.

00:10:37.300 You need people on the inside who are brave enough to jump on a metaphorical grenade and give up their livelihood for the public's right to know.

00:10:47.280 And there's really not many places where those people can go, but they can go to Project Veritas.

00:10:51.680 That's wild.

00:10:53.040 Do you think any of these documents that you're potentially exposing put the American government at risk?

00:11:00.080 No.

00:11:00.900 I think you have to make an editorial decision on a case-by-case basis.

00:11:04.940 But because, I don't know how many, 5.4 million people have died and many more people suffer as a result of this, I think the public has a right to know.

00:11:13.120 And I think you always have to do – there's this chapter in this book called Privacy.

00:11:17.900 I had a conversation with another podcast, Eric Weinstein, who you may know.

00:11:22.440 And him and I went on it for two hours.

00:11:24.920 And his criticism of me was, James, you harm people.

00:11:28.300 Your journalism harms people.

00:11:29.720 And what I told Eric, which is the same thing I'll tell you, is that in a society like the United States of America, where you place a primary value on the public's right to know, your journalism is always going to harm people.

00:11:44.740 But there has to be a balancing test between the value of the information versus the harm done to the individual.

00:11:51.620 In this case, it's a no brainer.

00:11:52.900 This is an epidemic that's killed people and we need to know the origins of it.

00:11:57.680 okay i think that's reasonable i think that's completely reasonable what was what was eric

00:12:03.600 saying was damaging it was that in particular or well i don't think eric was making a whole

00:12:10.860 lot of sense in his argument and i told him that you can go watch it on youtube it's he he had this

00:12:15.740 whole he's a mathematical genius so he made this whole analogy i wasn't on the efficiency frontier

00:12:21.500 In other words, I should blur people's faces more often.

00:12:25.460 And I told them, well, if I did that, then people would question the credibility of the

00:12:30.080 material.

00:12:31.120 And, uh, and I disagree.

00:12:33.400 I think in order to go after the institution, you have to expose the individual.

00:12:37.980 You have to put a name and a face on it.

00:12:40.980 And I also told Eric that we do record people without them knowing.

00:12:46.240 And some people think that's unethical.

00:12:48.400 You know, no one wants to be recorded without them knowing.

00:12:50.580 Yeah.

00:12:50.860 But the difference is whenever we do that, we're always with the person. I would never bug someone or record you when you're completely alone. And we would make the argument that the recording device is an extension of the right to speak. Because if I write down what you say, it's not going to be as accurate as if I recorded you. So we believe that recording someone, so long as you're with them, it's basically a constitutional right. It's a human right.

00:13:18.680 Um, okay. I can see how that could get, I can see how people would argue against that,

00:13:23.880 but depending on what you're using that for, and especially if it has to do with COVID, then

00:13:29.860 that seems like a necessity at this point. How is this kind of job? Okay. So how long have you

00:13:37.560 been doing this? You said you kind of got started in journalism when you were 19, um, which seems

00:13:42.960 kind of early for picking up on the politically correct universities. 2005? Yeah. This is early.

00:13:50.880 When I started the Centurion at Rutgers, it was before Facebook. I mean, I think Facebook was

00:13:55.960 November 2004. And I remember I was laying out the newspaper in the summer of 2004. It was before

00:14:01.400 Twitter. It was before YouTube. Wow. It was very early. And I would do the New Jersey equivalent

00:14:10.380 of a public information request into all my professor's salaries. So I, this is like the

00:14:15.720 worst student. Well, I did, I didn't get my classes get in the way of my education. Let's say it that

00:14:21.060 way. I, I remember going into the public records office and they just had the public information.

00:14:28.120 I just scanned it and published it. And I would put the newspaper in the, um, PO box for all the

00:14:33.720 professors. It was like muckraking, you know, transparency. And it was very uncomfortable

00:14:38.500 thing for me to do. Um, but I felt it necessary. I, then I started confronting professors with a

00:14:44.780 video camera. I did that, you know, in college. And then I graduated from college and I proceeded

00:14:50.920 to do it on a bigger scale, uh, Planned Parenthood. I did some work with Lila Rose,

00:14:55.960 who's an activist. I, and then I did a story on ACORN, which was, um, I'm not familiar with ACORN,

00:15:01.580 uh, government organization that gets money from the government to, uh, the deal with foreclosure

00:15:08.260 homes and voter registration drives. And I went into ACORN as a pimp. I dressed up like a pimp

00:15:14.000 and I got a 20 year old girl to be my, she was playing the role of a prostitute. 0.72

00:15:19.420 And we went into ACORN saying we wanted to start an underage prostitution business. It was like a 0.66

00:15:24.020 sting operation. What? This is about 11 years ago. And it was a big story. Uh, the videos caused

00:15:31.580 ACORN to be defunded in Congress as a result of this, these videos. And that was really what

00:15:37.180 that really got Veritas on the map and led me to do many more stories like that.

00:15:44.260 That's, that's wild. Wow. Have you ever taken any personality tests? Just like side note.

00:15:49.720 Uh, I've taken one called DISC. Have you heard of that? I haven't heard of DISC. No, I'm pretty

00:15:55.840 like my dad has one. So I'm, what is that called? It's called it's for at understand myself, but

00:16:01.400 it's the, it does the big five. So it, it judges how agreeable you are or how neurotic you are.

00:16:06.860 you don't strike me as somebody very agreeable and or very neurotic. How would you characterize

00:16:10.220 what is your first impression? Well, you might, you have to be unbelievably disagreeable in order

00:16:15.240 to do the kind of work you do, right? Like most people would be more concerned about, I think,

00:16:21.480 the feelings of other people. And you look like you're more concerned with what will the information

00:16:26.580 that's out there in the truth, right? Yes. And then neuroticism, that's just how likely you are

00:16:32.760 to experience negative emotion and anxiety. And I don't think you'd be able to do what you're doing

00:16:38.320 if you were a neurotic person. Interesting. I never, I never thought about the neurosis. I do

00:16:44.400 think there's a chapter in this book called a character. And I try to identify the qualities

00:16:50.140 of someone in this day and age who could do this sort of journalism, speak truth to power. And

00:16:55.420 the New York times used to say, do the journalism without fear or favor. What does that mean?

00:17:00.520 well without fear without favor you're not chasing after rewards you're not you're not

00:17:05.720 doing this for some type of financial gain um uh so i i've done a lot of introspection and i did

00:17:16.280 talk to a psychologist and i said help me understand myself like what what because everyone

00:17:21.460 comments you should they're so everyone's so afraid all the comments are you do you have

00:17:26.900 security. And I don't really think about that. I don't, I don't, I do have security, but I don't

00:17:31.760 worry about it. And I think it has to do with the fact that I'm not, we're not really political

00:17:37.880 people, but we're branded as such, you know, I think political people, the essence of it is you

00:17:43.860 want to do harm to those who are on the other side of you. And that's really not our mission.

00:17:48.360 I also think you have to have a degree of tunnel vision. I don't know if how that compares with

00:17:52.880 neurosis, but you have to be extremely tunnel vision. Nothing can get in your way. You have

00:17:58.100 to be indefatigable. Laura Logan, who's another journalist I deeply respect and admire. I was

00:18:06.040 talking to her about some of the things that we've been through and she said, well, those things are

00:18:09.220 great for you because those are, those are what get the sources to trust you. So when you do go

00:18:14.060 through this pain and you get arrested and sued and you, you, you keep going, you're effectively

00:18:19.960 getting the people inside the government to, to trust you enough to come to you in the first

00:18:24.380 place. So it's kind of all accumulated. That's actually a really good point. Yeah. Because if

00:18:30.820 you'd, yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Well, how has this been? Um, I know I heard of something

00:18:36.200 about an FBI raid. Yes. So that sounds a bit stressful. That was, uh, terrifying for a couple

00:18:42.840 days they what happened they uh i had a source send me ashley biden's diary this was in florida

00:18:51.860 and uh this was a year ago october of 2020 ashley biden most people don't know joe biden has a

00:18:59.880 daughter named ashley biden ashley biden had written a diary and uh someone sent me the diary

00:19:05.340 I wasn't able to fully, in 100% certainty, determine it was hers.

00:19:11.400 I was like 99%, but I didn't, for all I know, it could have been a setup.

00:19:16.640 And then she wrote some things in this diary that were very personal.

00:19:19.720 Like she had taken inappropriate showers with her father and stuff like that.

00:19:23.440 And I didn't know if that happened.

00:19:24.660 So I made the decision not to publish the diary.

00:19:26.840 Wow.

00:19:27.100 I tried to give it back to her.

00:19:28.860 I reached out to Joe Biden for comment.

00:19:31.420 um and then ashley biden's lawyer accused me of extortion for trying to ask joe biden for comment

00:19:40.860 which is absurd um and then a year later i the fbi showed up in my house there were about 12

00:19:48.440 agents they had a battering ram it was 6 a.m and it was a saturday morning november 6th i think

00:19:56.180 that was November 6th or November 7th, one of those two days. And my first, um, when they banged

00:20:03.280 on my door, I knew that it was the authorities because they had just raided two of my former

00:20:08.580 colleagues two days previous. So my first thought as this banging and I woke up was how long have

00:20:17.080 they been banging on my door? Because I knew within a matter of seconds, they were going to

00:20:21.440 break the door. So this is what's going through my head in an FBI raid. I, I, I sprinted towards

00:20:27.440 the door so that they wouldn't break the door. And I went to open the door and I put my hand

00:20:33.460 on the doorknob and I'm saying, I'm opening the door now. Cause this is like a movie. I mean,

00:20:36.820 they're like FBI open up just, just, just like you would think it would be. And I, and I think,

00:20:42.060 I think it'll like shoot me when I opened my door. So I opened the door and there's this like

00:20:46.520 close encounters of the third kind, bright white lights in my face. I can't see anything. It's

00:20:52.180 pitch black, 6.01 AM on a Saturday morning in New York. So they turned me around and handcuffed me

00:21:00.620 and they, and I'm in my boxer briefs and they put me in the hallway of my apartment building.

00:21:07.900 My neighbors are obviously at this point all awake. And, uh, at first I think I'm under arrest.

00:21:13.580 Yeah.

00:21:14.600 And if I'm under arrest, let me speak to my attorney.

00:21:17.260 But evidently they had a search warrant signed by a magistrate judge, which is a lower federal judge in the Southern District of New York, which is a federal jurisdiction in New York State.

00:21:28.660 And then they showed me the search warrant and it listed a number of crimes that either they may think that I have committed or somebody else may have committed.

00:21:37.620 Those crimes include accessory after the fact and misprison of a felony.

00:21:44.700 What does that mean?

00:21:45.900 Well, and I'm not a lawyer, so I'm going to paraphrase what I think it means.

00:21:50.000 Misprison of a felony is effectively a bystander law that you know somebody else has committed a crime, but you didn't do anything about it.

00:21:57.440 Accessory after the fact, well, that's pretty self-evident.

00:22:00.500 That means that you help someone.

00:22:03.100 But I'm a journalist.

00:22:05.080 and journalists have stolen documents sent to them all the time. I did not know that this diary was

00:22:12.060 stolen. I don't think it was. Currently, I don't think it is. But even if it was, it's my right

00:22:18.140 under the Constitution to publish it, which I didn't.

00:22:22.100 So that's legal as a journalist. You can be sent things or given things and publish them.

00:22:25.640 Yeah. Supreme Court case 2001, Bartnicki v. Vopper establishes the right of a journalist

00:22:30.780 to publish a document which is stolen so long as the journalist played no part in the theft of that

00:22:36.380 document. It's a Supreme Court. I mean, it's kind of common sense. Imagine someone sends you

00:22:43.940 something and it's stolen. You can't control whether it was sent to you. And so the Supreme

00:22:50.460 Court has established this and I knew that. So I'm holding the search warrant, right? And I'm

00:22:56.940 kind of, kind of to be a little vulnerable from it. I'm, I was in a, I was in a state of, I guess

00:23:02.180 you could call it PTSD after this occurred because I had been arrested 10 years prior and I'd been

00:23:08.480 through this whole federal process. It's the process that is the punishment oftentimes with

00:23:13.920 these things. And I, and I was holding the search warrant in my hand, looking at it as these agents

00:23:20.120 backed away, you know, they sort of back away while they're taking photographs. And I'm like,

00:23:24.720 this is, am I dreaming? Am I in some type of Dostoevsky novel? I don't know what's going on.

00:23:30.200 And then, and then while I'm holding the search warrant, which lists these

00:23:33.580 chicken shit charges, absurd, absurd, ridiculous crimes, they would never charge the New York

00:23:40.040 Times with these crimes because it's, it's, it's laughable. I get a text message from the New York

00:23:44.960 Times and somehow within minutes of this happening, the New York Times knows what I'm holding in my

00:23:52.900 hand. They know the subject of the secret grand jury subpoena. How the hell do they know that?

00:23:59.540 Of course, the New York Times is talking to, coordinating with, working with the FBI.

00:24:05.600 And that's why I wrote this book. Because I know this sounds crazy. It sounds like science fiction.

00:24:11.140 It's not science fiction. This is my life. This is real. This is truth. This is the reality. And

00:24:15.520 you need to understand the reality you're living in. The New York Times and the FBI

00:24:20.640 are working together in a world when journalists are supposed to speak truth to power.

00:24:27.800 They're representing the power. Now, what was interesting about this episode is that

00:24:33.480 while the New York Times was working in concert with the FBI, there were a lot of other journalists

00:24:39.500 out there who did defend us. You had a lot of people on the left who were upset about this.

00:24:44.560 The ACLU defended Project Veritas. What is the ACLU? American Civil

00:24:50.140 Liberties Union. Okay. And a lot of these organizations disagreed with us on our stories,

00:24:57.000 but they still came to our defense. But this is truly an extraordinary series of events. It's

00:25:01.680 ongoing. I have not been charged with anything. And a federal judge in New York ordered the FBI

00:25:08.920 to stop going through my phone. They took my two cell phones and only my two cell phones. They

00:25:15.160 didn't take my iPad or my laptop, which is very unusual. This whole thing is. Yeah, that is

00:25:20.400 extremely unusual. Yes. So I didn't realize that a judge would be able to. I mean, like I said,

00:25:27.080 I'm not very familiar with the hierarchy of these organizations, but I didn't realize a federal

00:25:31.260 judge can just tell the FBI to leave you alone. Well, the FBI and the Department of Justice are

00:25:37.220 executive branch agencies and they need judicial. They need permission from a judge to execute a

00:25:43.360 search warrant. It's a very aggressive move for the FBI to execute a search warrant. For the FBI

00:25:50.040 to execute a search, I mean, they put you in handcuffs, they raid your home. I mean, this is

00:25:54.100 a very intrusive and highly aggressive move. And usually they don't do this without indicting

00:25:59.620 someone. But they do need permission from a lower federal judge. So the judge that signed the search

00:26:06.000 warrant in New York, the question is, why did she sign it? What did they present her with as the

00:26:12.640 justification. And then an article three judge, that is to say a federal judge for life, a judge

00:26:19.240 named Torres in New York, ordered them to stop going through my phones and assigned what's called

00:26:26.080 a special master over the FBI, an independent individual, independent legal individual. This

00:26:32.760 thing is wild. That's crazy. It sounds like I'm making this up. I'm not. This is all happening.

00:26:40.620 It's still happening.

00:26:41.960 I don't know how it's going to conclude.

00:26:45.460 But I think the thing about it is that there's different rules.

00:26:51.220 If you work for NBC News or CBS or the New York Times, then there's another thing that happened.

00:27:00.480 They published my attorney-client privilege documents within days of this happening.

00:27:04.700 My private lawyer memos, the New York Times did, that were stolen or obtained illicitly.

00:27:10.940 So how did they get copies of those?

00:27:13.040 We don't know.

00:27:14.520 So this is what happened in the last few months.

00:27:17.900 That's so that's that recent.

00:27:19.760 Oh, yeah.

00:27:20.020 This happened in November, just two, three months ago.

00:27:23.740 Wow.

00:27:24.460 Do you have a family?

00:27:26.160 I have a mother and a father and a sister.

00:27:28.880 Yep.

00:27:29.580 OK, so you were by yourself when the FBI came.

00:27:32.980 Yeah.

00:27:33.340 and uh that's unbelievably stressful um but i have a good team we have a good team at veritas in fact

00:27:40.240 some of them walked into the studio here there's a bunch of them and they're good people and i

00:27:44.500 always say that i can't i can't continue doing this without people beside me who you know it's

00:27:52.120 it's it's not easy but uh it's it's not always so difficult there's there is great joy in fighting

00:28:00.420 And, uh, there's just some days that are very hard, some days, and then you get through that

00:28:06.820 day and put your pants on the next day and go back at it. So I probably kind of already touched

00:28:13.360 on this, but why do you continue doing this? If things like things happen, like the FBI raids

00:28:18.420 your house, like that is scary. That's like, I can, I can imagine you being, well, like you said,

00:28:24.820 concerned you're going to get shot. So why, why keep doing this if it's ending up being

00:28:31.760 potentially life and death? I don't think that I'll get shot. Um, I think, I think initially

00:28:41.860 when you're so passionate about something and you have a vision, a very clear vision of what you

00:28:48.700 want to do and what you want to accomplish at a certain point, you don't, you're so committed to

00:28:53.640 the passion and the desire to see the thing happen will overcome whatever marginal fear

00:28:59.720 you may feel because the excitement and the fun of it, I don't know what, maybe fun is

00:29:04.840 not the right word, but the, the desire to see your vision come to fruition is so motivating.

00:29:10.820 I don't, I'm not a psychologist.

00:29:12.900 And frankly, I think you probably know more about that field much more than I do, but

00:29:17.060 speaking personally, you're so passionate about it that you'll do anything to see it

00:29:22.420 come to fruition.

00:29:23.640 That's the first reason. That's the most important reason for me.

00:29:27.400 The second reason is the responsibility.

00:29:30.360 All of these people in the government that come to you and they say, please don't stop.

00:29:36.960 And they say there's nowhere else for us to go.

00:29:39.260 I mean, these people, you know, military people, you know, we have sources inside the Department of Justice.

00:29:46.760 We have people inside tech and Pinterest and Facebook and Google and Twitter and you have a responsibility so you really can't stop because those people look up to you.

00:29:59.700 But I would say the first most important reason is the passion.

00:30:05.560 Okay.

00:30:05.760 And what is it, like, can you tell me exactly what it is that you want to see come to fruition?

00:30:11.480 I think more people coming out, exposing what's really going on.

00:30:14.900 And what do you think is really going on? Like what's underneath all this?

00:30:19.640 Well, I don't know. I mean, we'll see. Things are not as things are not as they seem. And

00:30:27.780 as Mike Wallace has once said, as rarely as they should be, you know, the world that's presented

00:30:33.960 to us by our media officials are often the official sanctioned information. Journalism

00:30:40.860 used to be about running towards the podium asking questions, and now they run away from

00:30:45.560 the podium towards us with sanctioned information. And if you say anything contrary to the orthodoxy,

00:30:52.100 that they'll censor you. So my vision is a mass movement of whistleblowers and insiders who

00:30:58.300 release the real information. Okay. And I'm very hopeful. Most people are very cynical and hopeless.

00:31:04.680 I think that that will happen I think it is happening but mark my words I know that that

00:31:10.780 will happen you don't think something like big tech is going to take that out like you release

00:31:17.060 too many of these too much information on certain platforms you just delete you off of that platform

00:31:22.400 no because I believe content is king I believe if the journalism you're Canadian right Marshall

00:31:29.660 McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher, didn't he say something like the image will replace the

00:31:34.700 politician? I'm paraphrasing. The image is so powerful. There's a chapter in this book called

00:31:39.460 Image. Images transfix in a way that words do not. So Veritas' whole model is video.

00:31:47.700 I don't report anything unless you can see the people's lips moving.

00:31:51.480 So the video we did last week on the, literally the Pentagon papers. I mean, I don't know if the

00:31:56.620 New York Times had published the Pentagon Papers these days. Literally, it wasn't my words. It was

00:32:02.520 this Marine Corps guy inside the Defense Department. And what was remarkable is that not only Michaela

00:32:09.220 did tech not censor that video, they took it down eventually, but people were like organically

00:32:14.940 uploading it until it trended number one on Twitter. And I'm not even on Twitter.

00:32:20.180 So I believe if the story is strong enough and good enough, it'll trend.

00:32:23.800 okay on networks that don't like the story okay i think that's probably reasonable

00:32:30.860 wow well that's a lot okay i've got a bunch of questions i haven't gotten to any of them yet

00:32:36.480 but i've got a bunch of questions for you okay let's let's start with this um well i mean we

00:32:46.300 kind of covered this with the fbi but have you been threatened for uncovering things personally

00:32:49.980 in what way

00:32:51.480 well i guess it's like anyway letters people showing up misinformation put out about you

00:33:00.620 oh yeah i mean that the the way they usually threaten or or intimidate you is through the

00:33:09.860 legal process lawsuits and litigation but is is that like going into people's personal lives and

00:33:16.620 getting sued for doing that? Or is it just random threats like what happened with the FBI?

00:33:22.080 Initially, there's a whole chapter in this book called litigation. And I talk about they've sued

00:33:26.780 us so many times. We've never lost a lawsuit. They use the lawsuit as a vehicle to try to

00:33:32.120 bankrupt you or punish you or expose your emails through the discovery process of litigation. And

00:33:38.840 in the evolution of my doing this, I quickly realized that that will only work so long as

00:33:45.180 you do something wrong in private. Anything we do is going to come out, right? I can't keep

00:33:52.420 secrets. So in the discovery process of a lawsuit, they obtain my emails if it's relevant to the

00:33:58.540 lawsuit. And if I write something in the email that I don't want people to see, they'll find it.

00:34:03.700 So I learned through this process of litigation that they, the people that want to shut us down,

00:34:10.360 they do keep secrets they don't want to be sued they stopped suing us when they realized oh i can

00:34:18.920 i can when we do discovery i can propose you too i can get your emails and then they realize oh i

00:34:23.780 thought o'keefe was going to fold and give us a settlement we don't settle lawsuits and sometimes

00:34:29.460 that means we have to spend a million bucks or two million bucks to get to a jury trial

00:34:33.760 And I could have made it go away for $100,000. So I think that the number one, is it a threat? It's a form of coercion, intimidation, and an attempt to silence you and break your will. It's always the courts. It's always the system of justice, the system of injustice.

00:34:58.400 That's how they've primarily done this.

00:35:01.960 In 2010, I was arrested in a federal building in New Orleans, Louisiana, for trying to investigate a senator.

00:35:10.260 I walked in off the street in plain clothes, showed my real ID.

00:35:13.960 It's an open building to the public.

00:35:15.580 And they arrested me.

00:35:16.580 And when they found out who I was, they charged me with a crime I didn't commit.

00:35:22.100 It was a 10-year felony.

00:35:24.420 What?

00:35:24.900 Yeah. Ten years for trying to destroy federal property, interfere with a telephone system. I wrote another book about that. It's called Breakthrough. And I was a young 25-year-old idealistic, naive, sort of bushy-tailed young man.

00:35:43.600 and I was completely, I mean, it was traumatizing. I was put in shackles, federal shackles in an

00:35:49.960 orange jumpsuit. My mugshot made the front page of the New York times on Sunday above the fold.

00:35:55.440 And they made me out to be a bomb. I was trying to bomb a federal building with my iPhone. It was

00:35:59.440 ridiculous. True story. Wow. How long did, how long were you wrapped up in that for?

00:36:07.080 Three and a half years on federal probation. I was arraigned. I was put in a parish jail in

00:36:12.900 new orleans so when you say and i and i could we could talk about that for 30 minutes i won't you

00:36:18.780 can go out and read the story go online and read about it my point is so far thank god there's

00:36:27.380 never been any violence or any any you know sort of those sorts of threats i think people are

00:36:31.540 unless you're a lunatic you're afraid i'm going to expose you with your plot to commit these things

00:36:35.960 Yeah. They put you in shackles and put you in jail. That'll deter people. And the whole point

00:36:43.040 and the whole point is some people. Well, the whole point is they want to deter other people

00:36:47.560 from following in our footsteps. But if you keep going, you send a message to those people

00:36:53.080 that they can do it too. If you keep going, you're going to inspire, in fact, more people

00:36:59.700 than if you had not gone through that to begin with. And I thank those prosecutors in New Orleans

00:37:05.480 every day and it's there and they're the ones who are suffering they all got disbarred by the way

00:37:10.960 lost their law licenses that's another thing i've learned the world is round that bad people do bad

00:37:17.460 things and get away with it but not forever not forever especially when there's an army of

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00:38:37.860 Okay, what are the top worst things you've uncovered?

00:38:43.100 Have you ever gone down a rabbit trail that you didn't know at all where it was going to lead to?

00:38:51.460 and you were shocked at what you discovered? I want to hear some of those stories.

00:38:55.400 Interesting. Um, or did you always have some sort of idea? Like, uh, even with COVID, I mean,

00:39:00.420 there were kind of quite a few people talking about whether or not it was, you know, what were

00:39:03.820 the origins? And so has anything been like absolutely shocking? Wow. I'm thinking we've

00:39:13.200 done a lot of things. I think, um, I'm not shocked. Oftentimes, you know, you try to confirm

00:39:20.820 suspicions you have a suspicion or a hypothesis for example uh antibodies are better than the

00:39:26.880 vaccine you might have a hypothesis yeah so okay let's go out and confirm that so in that case we

00:39:32.580 actually did launch an investigation to pfizer and we did record a pfizer scientist saying those

00:39:37.060 words we confirmed the suspicion that's harder to do as a if you're an investigative reporter

00:39:44.140 the easier thing to do is to let the source come to you and determine what the story is

00:39:50.020 because if you have the hypotheses, you could spend years trying to confirm it and fail.

00:39:55.340 And it's very difficult to get on the inside of an organization like that

00:39:59.540 without running afoul of the law. And we don't break the law. So oftentimes the better thing to

00:40:04.940 do when it comes to going down a rabbit hole is have the source come to you and don't publish it

00:40:11.540 without corroborating it. You know, don't, don't try to get a couple of different sources to

00:40:16.500 confirm it another wild thing um 2016 the 2016 election uh we did a story on a guy named bob

00:40:24.460 creamer and scott foble in chicago and wisconsin and they were going around to trump rallies

00:40:30.180 and they were bird dogging as they called it they were inciting violence at these rallies and

00:40:36.680 blaming it on trump and these people were on tape admitting to this oh wow and this guy worked for

00:40:41.800 close to Hillary Clinton. This is in 2016. Very powerful guy, close friends with Barack Obama.

00:40:48.880 And he said into a hidden camera, don't tell anybody that we're doing this. He literally

00:40:52.700 said those words. And how do you get people in close enough to these other people? And then

00:40:59.720 those other people will actually admit these things. Like, well, wouldn't you, why would you

00:41:03.680 tell someone you weren't very close with some of these secrets? Well, that's a good question.

00:41:08.280 And the bottom line is you have to build a rapport with someone such that they trust you.

00:41:16.040 Undercover work.

00:41:17.080 Again, we don't do this as much these days because we have whistleblowers.

00:41:21.140 But back when I got started, undercover work was often about finding what people's needs were.

00:41:27.900 And a lot of people are motivated by money.

00:41:30.660 Some people are motivated by a sense of ego.

00:41:32.740 They brag or they'll brag to a beautiful woman or they'll, some people are motivated by sex.

00:41:40.300 So you're, you're trying to figure out what their need is and meet the need.

00:41:44.260 So in that particular case, Bob Creamer needed money.

00:41:47.940 So there was a donor who had a niece and, and he confided all of these things to the

00:41:56.120 donor's niece in a public place where it's not illegal to record in a public cafe.

00:42:03.420 Wow.

00:42:03.520 He was speaking loudly enough in this cafe where people around him could hear him.

00:42:09.080 So it's perfectly legal, but he did not know that he would, he was being recorded.

00:42:15.240 Wow. So when you were doing all this undercover work, who came up with the

00:42:18.920 like ideas on how to kind of get people to talk?

00:42:22.480 I think the people that I hire, you know, I try to, you know, I'm the CEO of the company, but I, these days we've gotten to such a size where I'm not speaking directly with the sources.

00:42:32.540 I'm trusting the people that I hire.

00:42:34.460 We're training them.

00:42:36.140 We have a pretty rigorous curriculum and most of it's ethics.

00:42:41.140 There's a chapter in this book called Ethics.

00:42:43.700 I talked to Eric Weinstein for two hours about ethics, actually on that podcast.

00:42:50.460 And it's, you know, ethics is a, is a tough, a tough thing.

00:42:53.860 It's because it's inherently situational, right?

00:42:57.160 If you're deceiving, if I'm deceiving you in order to extract or elicit a truth from

00:43:02.680 you, I'm doing that so that I can tell the truth to the people out there.

00:43:09.080 But if I'm identifying myself as who I am with you and I'm saying, oh, by the way, this

00:43:13.000 is being recorded, it's just a law of human nature that you're less likely to be honest

00:43:17.840 with me.

00:43:18.360 And if you're less and if you're not honest with me and I'm broadcasting the dishonesty, I would argue that that's less that's that's that's the not as good as if I was deceiving you and broadcasting the truth to the public.

00:43:33.040 So it's a question of relative deception. And you only have these two options in journalism and journalism where journalism have been corrupted is that these New York Times reporters, Washington Post reporters, CNN, whoever will say, hi, I'm from CNN.

00:43:46.300 tell me, Mr. Government official, tell me what's going on inside your department. It's like,

00:43:50.420 give me a break. They're never going to tell you where the secret juice is. So people say,

00:43:56.320 well, James, you're a liar. Well, yes, we deceive the subject in order to tell the truth to the

00:44:01.160 audience because it's a question of relative deception. And I argued with Eric about this,

00:44:05.300 and he thought, Weinstein thought, well, I could do a little bit of a better job. I could be more

00:44:09.820 efficient. I could reduce the harm more. And I said, I disagree. I think we're doing a pretty

00:44:15.680 good job of it. And by the way, nobody else is doing it. So where's your control variable?

00:44:20.540 What are you weighing this against? Yeah. So we don't want to blur faces. We want people to see

00:44:26.520 people's intonation and body language when we show the fraud or the lies. Yeah, it's tricky.

00:44:33.660 I don't know. I don't know if I'm torn or not. I don't think I am, especially in regards to some

00:44:40.040 of these issues like COVID, or you got into voting fraud too, right? Okay. We should cover

00:44:47.260 that too. But, but the idea of like the ethics behind this, I can see how that could come up.

00:44:52.760 It's interesting. I've definitely thought about that in my life too, whenever I've,

00:44:57.060 because my dad is extremely focused on truth, right? Yes. He's like, um, tell the truth or

00:45:03.820 at least don't lie. Right. And so I got that hammered into me. I'd love to know what he has

00:45:08.540 to say about this question of ethics and undercover. And I wonder what his position

00:45:13.000 would be. I know we should set that up. We'll set that up at some point. Is that, I'm, I'm

00:45:18.100 interested. That's a fascinating issue. It's, it's really fascinating because one ethicist in this

00:45:24.040 book, I, I, I quoted someone and he said, you can't justify deception in the abstract. It's

00:45:30.180 like trying to invent dry water or fireproof coal. How do you justify deceiving someone

00:45:35.760 in the abstract. It's always this like balancing act, this utilitarian test. So yeah, if you

00:45:43.920 Google me, if you Wikipedia me, if your audience is not familiar, you'll say James O'Keefe lies.

00:45:48.000 Well, okay, but so does CNN and the Washington Post, but they lie to millions of people.

00:45:54.200 I wouldn't characterize it as lying. We present ourselves as something that we're not

00:45:59.180 in order to elicit the truth so that we can broadcast the truth to the people.

00:46:05.760 Yeah. So I had, like I said, I had issues with this. I was really sick as a kid. And I can

00:46:11.760 remember when I was trying to figure out my autoimmunity, I had doctor's appointments where

00:46:16.720 I'd tell them what they needed to hear in order to get the information I needed in order to continue

00:46:22.000 figuring out what was wrong with me. And I had absolutely no issues with it. I was like, you

00:46:26.960 know, some of these things aren't true. I had the same issue when dad was sick over the last couple

00:46:31.420 of years. And it was like, sometimes telling people the truth just doesn't end up with the

00:46:37.560 truth. Right. But it is complicated. Very complicated. And there's this whole, like,

00:46:43.840 again, I'm not a mathematician, but you wrestle with the ethics of it. You have to, you have to

00:46:52.140 wrestle with it. You don't like harming people. That's not the point. But if you value, if you

00:47:00.900 put a primary value on people's right to know information, you don't have a choice, but to

00:47:05.060 do it. It's very, it's very interesting. I think it's interesting. You know, I, I think this whole,

00:47:10.580 this whole theme of journalism is interesting in this world we live in because there's so little

00:47:13.780 of it. There's so little journalism happening. Yeah. It's crazy. When do you think this switch

00:47:18.660 happened? Like at some point, I mean, I don't know, cause I don't know when it was, but

00:47:23.740 people used to be, you know, anti-government and kind of anti-authority and journalists were seen

00:47:29.600 as truth seekers and they're going to expose people. So I feel like, I don't know when that

00:47:34.860 was, maybe the seventies when they were doing what you're doing, but when did that switch over

00:47:39.740 to whatever we see now? That's a great question. I try to trace it back. I think you're right.

00:47:45.780 It's at seven seventies was like the sixties and seventies to me was just the absolute,

00:47:49.640 um, quintessential muckraking journalism. You had the Chicago sun times used to do,

00:47:55.520 think I'm hardcore. These guys used to buy a bar and they called it the Mirage in Chicago.

00:48:01.320 And the journalists purchased a bar and pretended to be bartenders and filmed everything. And they

00:48:06.800 got shady deals and people doing backroom deals and bribing city inspectors. They had hidden

00:48:12.180 cameras in the rafters. That was hardcore. And for months, you have European journalists like

00:48:20.720 Gunter Wallriff, who pretended to be a reporter at the Bill, which is Germany's largest newspaper.

00:48:26.700 Upton Sinclair, I mean, he was the quintessential American muckraker in 1906 that wrote The Jungle.

00:48:32.760 He went undercover, but he took off his tie.

00:48:35.520 He had a lunch bucket pail, pretending to be like one of the guys at the meatpacking plant.

00:48:39.380 And he wrote about all of the conditions inside The Jungle.

00:48:44.200 Something changed, I think, in the 1980s and 1990s.

00:48:48.480 I think it was, I think it was, litigation was a big, big one.

00:48:53.820 In 1992, ABC News was sued by Food Lion Grocery, Food Lion, big grocery store chain.

00:49:01.200 ABC News, Primetime Live, did a sting operation where they put hidden cameras in their wigs and they filmed.

00:49:05.960 They were bleaching the meat.

00:49:07.560 They were repackaging rotten meat.

00:49:09.600 Ew!

00:49:10.020 Food Lion's stock tanked, okay?

00:49:13.560 And ABC News got sued by the grocery store for, I don't remember the exact legal issues,

00:49:18.760 but it was trespass or something like that.

00:49:20.560 Oh, wow.

00:49:21.320 And they won?

00:49:22.660 And ABC News won on appeal, but it cost, as these things do, millions of dollars.

00:49:29.300 Oh.

00:49:29.940 So, or over a million dollars.

00:49:31.620 So the commercial imperative, I might actually sound like a socialist here, and I don't mean to.

00:49:36.740 I'm just being honest.

00:49:38.120 The commercial imperative is incompatible with truth telling.

00:49:42.320 Because if your goal is to report on these things aggressively, well, you'll get sued.

00:49:48.300 And then you have to spend all this money defending yourself in court.

00:49:51.120 So what's the easiest thing to do if you're a capitalist?

00:49:54.060 It's to not do it in the first place.

00:49:56.720 Now, I'm a non-profit, so the profit is not our motive.

00:50:03.580 But ABC News stopped doing that.

00:50:05.240 That was a shot across the bow for investigative journalism.

00:50:07.520 Mike Wallace, the former legend at CBS News, he stopped doing ambush interviews.

00:50:13.780 And over time, you had newspapers die out.

00:50:16.440 There are no more real newspapers anymore.

00:50:19.340 As big tech grew in the early 2000s, there was the consolidation of news.

00:50:25.800 And then you had this phenomenon where journalists became too close to their sources.

00:50:30.120 They don't want to bite the hand that feeds them.

00:50:32.720 They tend to extol the virtues of these people in power rather than to condemn them.

00:50:37.520 And I get it. If you're a beat reporter, if you're a New York Times national security reporter and you got your government sources inside the NSA, what are you going to do? Expose them? You'd be out of a job. And that's what happened. And now it's become, and then you add this fear thing onto it where they'll raid you and take your shit if you expose. All these things combined, there's nobody doing it. And of course, the only people who can do it are independent citizens, usually without the money, the resources or the backing.

00:51:07.520 that's what happened and it's taken about 30 to 40 years for us to get this far

00:51:11.820 wow i don't think i've really thought about that before yeah that's pretty weird because normally

00:51:19.400 i remember first coming across your stuff and i thought well i think first i was like no way

00:51:25.060 i think that was my first reaction you didn't believe it or i don't i think i probably did

00:51:31.240 because there was you know there were videos i was like but i was like this is it's like too good

00:51:36.160 right? Too good to be true. Yeah. Kind of like, like these stories are, you know, you go and

00:51:41.800 investigate some of these, what some people would call conspiracy theories and then you're proving

00:51:45.980 them. And I mean, I like, I'm with you there. So I w I was just, I was just surprising. I was like,

00:51:52.520 this is a different kind of journalism than I've, than we've seen. And then I remember kind of

00:51:58.280 feeling like, is it appropriate? Yeah. Is it ethical? Right. Um, and then being kind of like

00:52:04.940 kind of torn there, but mostly like, yeah, it's probably ethical. Um, but then going back to like

00:52:09.960 sixties and seventies, it's not even, uh, it wasn't even abnormal, right? When you thought

00:52:13.800 of a journalist, that's actually what you thought of. And now that doesn't exist anymore,

00:52:17.140 which is crazy. Yes, it is crazy. It is crazy. The people in Chicago and Chicago, sometimes I

00:52:23.580 think, uh, Pam Zekman said that no, everyone was afraid of city hall. No one wanted to speak about

00:52:29.140 these bribes. And if you read a book called The Mirage, it's about this bar that they purchased

00:52:34.960 in 1977. But Ben Bradley, the famous legendary executive editor of the Washington Post,

00:52:41.160 denied the Chicago Sun-Times a Pulitzer in 1978 or thereabouts. And his rationale was they used

00:52:47.440 too much deception to get the story. You have to remember, in the early 70s, you had reporters like

00:52:52.740 William Gaines, who literally dressed up as a janitor and assisted in surgery at a Chicago,

00:52:59.420 he won the Pulitzer Prize. Can you imagine me helping someone do surgery? They'd think that

00:53:05.040 was unethical. It's pretty hardcore. But William Gaines exposed the fact that surgeons were having

00:53:10.780 janitors help them dissect people. This is a true story. No one knows this. He won the Pulitzer 1.00

00:53:17.340 Prize in 1972. The Pulitzer Prize. So when they stopped giving out the trophies for doing

00:53:23.540 undercover work, when they started suing you for doing undercover work, guess what happened?

00:53:27.520 People stopped doing it. People stopped doing it. People don't, you have to be,

00:53:32.960 I'm going to keep plugging the book because I have to. And by the way, all proceeds go to

00:53:36.200 Project Veritas. It's a great book. The first chapter of this book is called Suffering.

00:53:40.160 you kind of have to be a masochist you kind of have to like pain to do this that's not why I

00:53:50.500 do it I don't like pain and a lot of people will look at the people that work for me and be like

00:53:55.740 what's wrong with you but we're just passionate we believe but yeah it sucks it hurts it's painful

00:54:03.460 It's a reputational hazard. But yeah, journalism is dying. I don't think it's dead. And again, I think it requires normal, everyday people, honest cops, honest nurses. I'm doing a story right now, which I will release next week, involving a massive bombshell.

00:54:24.460 and i can't talk about it specifically but i told you off the air and it involves just everyday

00:54:30.620 normal honest hard-working people who have just had enough and say hey james give me one of those

00:54:36.360 hidden cameras please mail me one of those cameras because i see this stuff happen in my

00:54:40.820 and i just need to record it just ordinary they don't want to be famous they don't they don't

00:54:45.780 want to lose their job but they've had enough okay well i yeah i've decided i think that's

00:54:54.320 reasonable like if you're working in a corporation i can see the need for privacy as well but if

00:55:01.460 you're working in a corporation that deals with the public too and things are shady enough that

00:55:06.000 your employees are like i need a hidden camera then maybe something's up there probably gone

00:55:12.060 too far but how do you define privacy where do you think that boundary is

00:55:15.520 i don't think it would be an issue if people didn't lie exactly so if you're not

00:55:24.160 like i can understand where you're coming from when you can you kind of need to tell people a

00:55:28.240 story in order to get the truth out um but i think in personal lives if people don't live a lie

00:55:35.780 then they probably don't really have to worry about privacy i don't know but then it's hard

00:55:41.680 to say because if government laws change then sometimes you're forced to lie in order to not

00:55:48.260 be in trouble i don't know are you saying that people committing malfeasance don't have any right

00:55:53.400 to privacy is that effectively what you're saying no because i think like i said i think

00:56:02.000 laws can also change and then you end up being a criminal whether or not you want to be i mean

00:56:08.040 take vaccine passports for instance right i've read that those are rampant

00:56:13.840 right and so that's you know the american government forcing people not forcing people

00:56:19.600 but pressuring people into coming up with alternative ways to be able to live in society.

00:56:25.600 And I don't think most of the people doing that would be criminals otherwise.

00:56:29.520 So I don't know.

00:56:31.040 We're in tricky times.

00:56:32.940 Yes.

00:56:33.920 The privacy issue is a really, I think it's not so much about privacy because most of these things are filmed.

00:56:39.640 People know that they're being spoken to.

00:56:41.340 They know they're sharing information with a stranger.

00:56:44.180 So it comes down to societal trust issues.

00:56:46.260 Why are you sharing this information with someone you barely know?

00:56:48.700 Yeah, that's what I said earlier.

00:56:50.300 Exactly.

00:56:51.580 And frankly, what I've found, which is counterintuitive, is that people are more likely to be honest with complete strangers.

00:56:57.280 Think of it.

00:56:57.700 Taxi cab confessions, the person you met at the bar, the hairdresser.

00:57:02.360 You're more likely to say the truth to people that you don't know.

00:57:05.620 It's also against your interest to betray someone.

00:57:08.720 It's usually the person that's doing that, that's violating their own.

00:57:13.340 But I think it's more to do with dignity.

00:57:15.380 I think that there's something about being filmed, you know, because think about it.

00:57:20.480 I can write down what you said.

00:57:21.780 I can write about it and you wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that.

00:57:25.100 But if I film you and you don't know it, and I've been trying to study this because I can't

00:57:30.300 figure it out.

00:57:31.200 Why is recording someone do them more harm than writing down what they say?

00:57:36.200 And that's a really fascinating subject.

00:57:39.400 I've done a lot of research into this issue to try to understand it.

00:57:42.380 And I've found that some courts have suggested that you're violating the person's dignity.

00:57:47.340 You know, it's about your right to control the dissemination of your own image.

00:57:52.200 So this is a really fascinating thing.

00:57:54.080 And as I think we, as we grow as undercover work, these cameras now are so tiny, you know,

00:58:00.060 I'm not wearing one right now.

00:58:01.620 But for the acorn story, I put one in my tie and it was the size of one of these little

00:58:06.340 icons on my tie and you couldn't barely see it.

00:58:10.160 And maybe one day they'll make cameras for your, um, for your eyeball.

00:58:13.920 I kind of have that image on the front cover of the book here.

00:58:16.440 Um, I don't, I don't know.

00:58:18.860 Maybe they'll put it in your lens, like a contact lens and you're filming everything.

00:58:23.540 So this is not the government doing this.

00:58:27.040 This is civilians doing this.

00:58:28.660 So the law doesn't apply.

00:58:30.180 It's just about ethics.

00:58:31.060 It's about, it's about an ethical question and harm to people.

00:58:35.380 Ultimately, transparency will be a good thing for society.

00:58:39.520 It'll be a very good thing.

00:58:41.140 Oh, yeah.

00:58:41.480 And I think right now it's pretty evident that we need more transparency.

00:58:45.980 Like, I think if we go in the direction of, okay, you know, there are individuals that

00:58:50.020 might be harmed from this, but there's more transparency across some of these institutions.

00:58:54.420 I think at the point we're in, that is necessary, right?

00:58:57.860 That risk is worth taking.

00:58:59.000 Well, let me give you an example of, this is interesting too, the, how image compares

00:59:04.420 with the written word, the New York Times.

00:59:06.160 I keep on picking on the New York Times for a reason.

00:59:07.900 The New York Times wrote a story about us. They published our private attorney client documents. I don't know how they got them. They were obviously stolen or taken without our consent.

00:59:19.500 Wow.

00:59:20.220 That means communications between me and my lawyer and specifically the lawyer that is suing the New York Times, which is in the United States. You can't do that. It's a fundamental law of American jurisprudence. You don't publish the other litigants attorney client memos.

00:59:35.420 The New York Times did this and the memos were quite favorable to us.

00:59:38.580 The memos were like, we don't, we don't break the law.

00:59:40.460 Here's how you avoid breaking the law.

00:59:42.260 Here's how you behave ethical.

00:59:43.400 But the New York Times headline was written in the following way.

00:59:47.120 Documents show how far Veritas's deceptive reporting practices could go before running

00:59:53.920 afoul of federal laws.

00:59:55.700 You know, another way of saying that we check with our lawyers to make sure everything we

00:59:59.700 did was legal, but do you see how they worded it?

01:00:03.520 Yeah.

01:00:03.740 Yeah.

01:00:03.920 You have to kind of like twist the newspaper to understand what there's, it sounds like I was traipsing over the boundary when the memos clearly show. So what I'm trying to say is that they use words in a mendacious way.

01:00:22.680 They're able to write about, you know, that cup of sparkling water and make it seem like a cup of Coca-Cola.

01:00:30.080 But when you film the object, it clearly shows that it's a cup of sparkling water.

01:00:36.000 And that's why I think what you said is correct.

01:00:38.700 The more things are filmed, the more accountable these people are going to be and the more free we're ultimately going to be.

01:00:46.400 Because they have a way with words.

01:00:47.940 And I've never seen it this bad, Michaela.

01:00:49.600 when they wrote that article, I was beside myself. Because of course, when you write a headline like

01:00:54.080 that, what's the pundits on Twitter going to say? Oh, there goes James O'Keefe running afoul of

01:00:59.160 those federal laws. Well, no, that's not what the article said, but they twisted it. And I know,

01:01:05.180 you know what I'm talking about? Cause they do it every day. You know, it's, it's maddening.

01:01:10.920 Yeah. It is maddening. Okay. Well, I probably need to, you mentioned voting fraud. I know

01:01:19.360 you did a bunch of work into that. Okay. So I'm, I'm like, I'm not very familiar because I think

01:01:27.640 because I'm Canadian actually. So I kind of just heard, I heard about all this. You're not an

01:01:31.500 American citizen yet or becoming one? You're Canadian? Slowly. Slowly? Yeah. Never going

01:01:36.820 back to Canada. Never? No, things have to change dramatically before I go back to Canada. You're

01:01:40.500 from Toronto? Yeah. Toronto. The city or the suburbs or? Toronto, right downtown. Yeah. They

01:01:45.980 just wrecked it really it's really disappointing yeah i'm like blaming the government for that

01:01:50.180 when did you leave it just wrecked it september i was concerned i thought you know they're like

01:01:55.220 oh you have 85 vaccination rates we're gonna open back up and i thought yeah except you know then

01:02:02.180 there'll be another variant and there'll be another outbreak in the winter and they'll shut

01:02:05.720 everything down again even though everyone's vaccinated and i'm leaving before that happens

01:02:09.520 so i left in september and i like i really left i threw away my stuff and left really it must have

01:02:13.980 been hard though because it's your home i think i've been through so many like weird experiences

01:02:19.700 that it wasn't that hard i'm like a bit upset that toronto because toronto was a pretty good city

01:02:26.020 had really cool little areas it was kind of like new york well tiny new york um and it was cool

01:02:32.920 and now like the downtown has racked all the cool little unique stores are closed down the

01:02:37.980 neighborhoods I grew up in are in terrible shape. And like my family, my family that's back there,

01:02:44.280 my brother and my parents now are like, maybe we need some backup plans because of the state

01:02:49.800 Canada's in. So I don't know if it was scary. It was a little bit scary, I guess, but mostly

01:02:55.280 aggravating. I understand completely. I'm from New Jersey and our office is in New York state

01:03:01.180 and I'm still there and I'm reluctant to leave because it's my home. Yeah. They're pushing,

01:03:06.520 they're pushing it pretty hard yeah it's pretty nice in nashville it is i gotta say it's pretty

01:03:11.580 nice here yeah okay voter fraud was any of that real like i heard um a lot of people talk about

01:03:20.580 whether or not that was our stories are just generally just speaking specifically to the

01:03:26.500 reporting we've done or just speaking broadly about the election or no broadly i'm broadly

01:03:31.360 um well and i and i don't know if i can speak broadly because i don't know enough to comment

01:03:37.760 i can only talk to what i witnessed i can only give you anecdotal evidence okay that stuff that's

01:03:41.600 what i can give you the anecdotal evidence in other words things i've caught on tape that

01:03:45.840 actually did happen yeah but i that doesn't necessarily mean there was enough fraud to

01:03:50.100 overturn the election no okay it just means that fraud happened specifically i think when people

01:03:54.420 use the word rigged they mean something different they mean like sort of this media system you know

01:04:01.180 There's a book by Molling Hemingway called Rigg.

01:04:03.060 She talks about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and their alliances.

01:04:06.640 I'll only speak to what I know to be true.

01:04:10.040 In Minnesota, we did a story featuring a Somali man named Liban Muhammad.

01:04:15.400 This is in Ward 6 in Minneapolis.

01:04:18.540 Minneapolis is a very heavy Somali community. 0.92

01:04:22.020 And there was ballot harvesting.

01:04:23.140 What does that mean?

01:04:23.720 They collect other people's ballots.

01:04:25.880 And it is illegal to harvest ballots.

01:04:28.440 What does that mean, collect other people's ballots?

01:04:29.980 go around and collect third party, but pick them up. So someone comes to your apartment and pick

01:04:34.260 them up. And there was evidence to suggest that he was filling them out. And there's this one

01:04:38.960 video that he filmed. He filmed himself. I did not film him. James O'Keefe claims I didn't make

01:04:45.420 these claims. He made these claims. He filmed himself on Snapchat privately, but one of the

01:04:51.320 sources came to me with the recording and Liban Muhammad was in his car covered in absentee

01:04:57.120 ballots. And he's bragging about all the ballots that he's collecting, hustling at two in the

01:05:04.380 morning, collecting all these ballots. And I report this because it is a crime to have more

01:05:10.440 than three ballots in your possession in the state of Minnesota. Another video shows a cash exchange

01:05:18.140 for an absentee ballot to fill it out. It's on videotape. You can see both of their faces.

01:05:23.200 they're speaking in somali but we got a translator this is a federal felony again one instance of

01:05:29.920 voter fraud is it i don't know but obviously if it happens once it happens more than once it

01:05:35.660 doesn't mean it's enough to overturn a national election but it is my job to report this and i do

01:05:41.060 september 27 2020 report this video this video goes wildly viral i mean it's blockbuster you

01:05:48.980 You have a cash exchange for ballot caught on tape.

01:05:51.620 Yeah.

01:05:52.760 The next day, the New York Times, our friends of the New York Times, publish a A-section hit piece.

01:06:00.760 And the headline is, Experts Say.

01:06:04.240 I don't know where they find these experts.

01:06:06.520 Experts Say Project Veritas Video was a coordinated disinformation campaign.

01:06:12.640 The first sentence of the article says a deceptive video released by James O'Keefe.

01:06:17.820 And again, there's that word again, deceptive.

01:06:21.280 Well, the video is not deceptive.

01:06:22.760 The video happened.

01:06:24.400 I didn't even film the video.

01:06:26.000 It was filmed by Liban Muhammad and posted to Snapchat.

01:06:29.340 But the New York Times had interviewed Stanford researchers.

01:06:33.860 That's Stanford University, California.

01:06:35.640 And got some professor to opine on how I was a disinformation person.

01:06:40.560 The rationale was I met with Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy, a couple days prior to show him this video.

01:06:47.820 And therefore it's disinformation because I'm coordinating with people, but it's called an embargo in journalism.

01:06:53.340 So they write this article, Michaela, and then what's up, what happens is absolutely fascinating.

01:06:58.520 The article, the New York times comes out.

01:07:00.940 And then of course the New York times is the holy Bible, if you will, in the tech world, Facebook bans the video citing the New York times because the New York times said it's disinformation.

01:07:12.360 and it's this and then before you know it people such as yourself or good citizens out there are

01:07:18.660 thinking yeah that veritable they banned that video for disinformation that really happened

01:07:23.320 but it all happened because the new york times quoted some expert in california saying it's

01:07:30.160 so we sued the new york times for defamation i said enough is enough i was beside myself when

01:07:35.900 this article came out yeah i sued them for defamation and just to give you an idea of how

01:07:40.980 rare it is for someone who sues the new york times to win there's only been um i don't know

01:07:48.320 less than a dozen people in 50 years to have survived the initial motions in a lawsuit we

01:07:56.540 survived motion to dismiss in a defamation lawsuit against the new york times and the judge

01:08:00.760 in new york said it was the new york times who engaged in disinformation and deception his words

01:08:07.820 And then the New York Times was forced to answer our lawsuit about this voter fraud video.

01:08:12.160 And they admitted, Michaela, in court that, in fact, it was illegal what Liban Muhammad did.

01:08:18.920 They admitted in the documents he did break the law.

01:08:21.200 But guess what?

01:08:22.140 They haven't corrected the initial article.

01:08:25.620 So we're living in Gaga land.

01:08:27.400 We're living in clown world.

01:08:29.180 People say, who's going to hold these people accountable?

01:08:31.480 Well, we did.

01:08:32.520 We sued them.

01:08:33.340 We're winning.

01:08:34.300 They still haven't corrected the article.

01:08:35.640 wow so you asked me about voter fraud and i'm going to give you anecdotal evidence like i just

01:08:41.300 gave you i can i can tell a few more stories like this i would swear to it under oath that that was

01:08:46.300 illegal what he did but in a world where the video is taken down off off of these platforms

01:08:53.880 because it's disinformation because credible journalists say so by virtue of their own decree

01:09:02.100 that they are indeed credible because they're credible. How do you disprove that? How do you

01:09:07.200 fight that? What do you do? What's your recourse? How do you hold them accountable?

01:09:13.980 I think we're getting farther than any other organization has. I think we are winning.

01:09:19.640 We're beating them in court. But to some extent, these people think they're above the law.

01:09:24.860 They think that nothing can hold them accountable. So that's one such story. I could tell more,

01:09:28.560 But that will give you an insight into how how it is.

01:09:31.340 I don't think there was enough, you know, and most fraud, but there certainly was anecdotal fraud.

01:09:39.160 OK, that makes sense.

01:09:41.480 It makes sense.

01:09:43.760 OK.

01:09:45.340 We talked about.

01:09:47.680 Fauci a bit, but I feel like we should cover that a little bit more and then wrap this up.

01:09:53.460 All right.

01:09:53.720 um why is it that you think like why is fauci still a good guy in the mainstream news

01:10:04.660 like if what you've uncovered is true then how is it that the narrative how is it that that's

01:10:13.740 not widespread and why that was a lot of questions there so good luck with that um

01:10:21.360 not only you may have stumped me on this one i don't i mean i think this speaks to the heart of

01:10:28.220 everything we've been talking about i just like i don't i don't understand what's going on at this

01:10:33.020 point why do people think fauci is a good guy despite the evidence shows that he for example

01:10:38.240 has lied or why do people yeah and if what you're if what you've uncovered is true if that's true

01:10:45.220 then why is there what looks like this giant conspiracy?

01:10:50.080 I think that's a psychological question.

01:10:52.400 I think it's people believe what they is easiest for them to believe.

01:10:55.960 It's, it's, it's tough to have their minds changed.

01:10:59.420 You know, we live in a world where people want to watch CNN and I'm picking on these

01:11:05.180 organizations because it's, it's, it's laughable.

01:11:07.380 It's a, it's disgraceful at this point, what they put on TV, but why do people watch it? 1.00

01:11:11.940 Why do people want to believe the chyrons on CNN? Because it's easy for them, convenient for them. When you shatter that narrative, when you show them the reality, they don't want to look at it. They don't want to believe it. That's a psychological. I'm not qualified to answer that. I'm a journalist. I'm not a psychologist. But I can tell you with 100% certainty that those documents inside the Pentagon are real. 0.99

01:11:33.960 we've we've we the marine corps major we got reached out to him for comment he did tell us

01:11:40.060 that there are other people inside the government that are good people that are trying to reform from

01:11:43.880 the inside we have us another source we have multiple sources back them up so i can tell you

01:11:49.240 with a hundred percent certainty that these things are real why don't people want to believe it well

01:11:55.080 i i think to some extent we are changing people's minds not to everyone's mind and i would and i

01:12:03.140 would, uh, push back on the notion that everyone's still, or the majority of people like Fauci,

01:12:08.880 there may be a small fraction of people that do. And you're just hearing more of it because

01:12:14.280 there's an unequal representation on TV. And I think we're making a difference. You just can't

01:12:19.760 change everyone's mind at the same time. It takes a little while. Okay. That's fair. I suppose also

01:12:25.620 when you stop believing in some of these narratives then, and I think this has happened to

01:12:30.480 me is then you end up questioning, questioning everything. Right. It's like, okay, if one thing

01:12:35.660 that you firmly believed in, even if that's like legacy media or something, if that's not what you

01:12:40.520 think it is, then what else do you know? Isn't true. Right. Right. Like what else do you believe

01:12:45.700 in? That's a complete lie. And then that's painful. Right. Going through that. It sounds

01:12:49.600 like you went through that. I don't know if you went, even went through it. Were you just always

01:12:53.920 like that? It was like this weird trait that I had when I was a kid. I don't know. I remember I was

01:12:59.180 obsessed with the media as a young man and my mom was like why are you always bitching about local

01:13:06.380 news and i i as this it was just bizarre i i did not think i was going to go into journalism i

01:13:10.900 didn't know even what that even means to go into journalism i just would watch the local news and

01:13:15.400 say well that's not the way it is i would that's so weird i would read the new york times i would

01:13:19.060 say this is not the way it is and it was the contempt it was the righteous indignation it

01:13:23.460 was the reality it was the realization that how things were portrayed were different than how

01:13:28.080 things are and things are not as they seem. And that motivated me. I didn't know what to do. I

01:13:34.100 knew that it was wrong. I'm not a psychologist. I don't know. Maybe people are uncomfortable,

01:13:41.000 like you say, to change. People believe what they want to believe. But I have seen people

01:13:48.140 change their mind. I saw a law professor after our New Hampshire expose showing dead people voting.

01:13:54.460 He actually changed his mind.

01:13:56.600 I have the email.

01:13:57.740 He said, I never thought in-person voter fraud was possible until I saw your video.

01:14:03.220 And sometimes even if one person changes their mind, it's still worth doing.

01:14:08.160 I'm not a pollster.

01:14:09.280 I don't know how many people, but, you know, people have been arrested.

01:14:12.520 Raquel Rodriguez was arrested in Texas after we exposed her involved in selling votes and buying votes.

01:14:19.280 She was arrested by the attorney general of Texas.

01:14:21.560 What?

01:14:22.240 Last year.

01:14:23.060 none of this was reported in the media of course yeah still trended on twitter they took it down

01:14:29.660 but it trended they can keep taking it down but we just got to do more of it you know so wow

01:14:38.100 okay well james that was wild that was wild i'm gonna link this this is gonna be linked in show

01:14:49.700 notes and on youtube and everything it's worth checking out this is real journalism thank you

01:14:55.860 thank you very much for coming and talking to me that was fun thank you yeah everyone um i'm gonna

01:15:03.800 make a shameless book plug uh american muckraker we're a non-profit organization uh and if you buy

01:15:09.980 the book all proceeds go to project veritas we're a 51c3 and um stay tuned for i don't know when

01:15:17.120 you're putting this out but as the time of this filming next week we have a another covid follow-up

01:15:22.320 story and this one is that's gonna be that's gonna be crazy that's gonna be great yeah involving

01:15:27.660 children five years old to 11 years old things that happened to them with this vaccine this is

01:15:32.540 crazy but it's real it's true where do people go online if they want to follow you um we're still

01:15:40.040 on instagram barely you can't tag us which is kind of it's damaging because the most people

01:15:46.800 will follow you by virtue of other people tagging you. We're on Telegram. We have 700,000 followers

01:15:52.300 on Telegram and we upload the clips into a Telegram. You can go follow Project Veritas

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01:16:01.620 their Twitters. We call it distribution by proxy and it's working effectively. And you could sign

01:16:07.700 up on our email list and follow us on Instagram, Project Veritas and American Muckraker is the

01:16:13.120 book. We're also having Michaela and I'm inviting you on the air, a book party, a book launch party

01:16:18.960 in Miami on January 29th. You can get tickets to that projectveritasexperience.com. And again,

01:16:25.380 all proceeds go to Project Veritas. Okay. Wow. Thanks, James. Thank you.

01:16:43.120 Thank you.

The Mikhaila Peterson Podcast - January 27, 2022

135. High-Risk Whistleblowing ｜ James O' Keefe of Project Veritas

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