American Pravda Read online

  For their veritas, Solzhenitsyn and other Russians turned to the Samizdat, real news and authentic literature copied by whatever means available and circulated at no small risk. At Project Veritas, we are a proud part of the American Samizdat. We have literally millions of allies sitting in front of computer screens across America fact-checking major media stories and adding new information when they find it. If no force can stop the dominant media, we can at least challenge them. Unlike Pravda or the Times, our truth is not protected by power. Our truth is tested by power on a daily basis. We cannot afford to be wrong.

  Defining the Veritas Journalist

  The goal of Project Veritas is to show the world as closely as possible the way the world really is. In the twenty-first century, sharing reality is a great way to make enemies, especially if that reality reflects badly on the people in power. From the major media’s perspective, our exposure of corruption is often perceived as more of a problem than the corruption itself.

  In the not too distant past, however, exposure of bad behavior used to be role of all journalists. As late as the mid-twentieth century, the media landscape was peppered with independent folk heroes who could not be bought or sold. Those reporters, a vanishing breed, would on occasion use whatever means necessary to get at the unvarnished truth, even if it meant using deception to peel back the curtain hiding it. Said veteran urban journalist Ken Auletta, “The journalist’s job is to get the story by breaking into their offices, by bribing, by seducing people, by lying, by anything else to break through that palace guard.”1 For a generation or so—perhaps since and because of Watergate—everything has changed.

  This book will expose the major media’s decaying ethics and show that the election was an inflection point in media history, what the managing director of CBS Digital alluded to in saying that the media corporations exhibited “a profound lack of empathy in the service of endless posturing.” To lay the foundation for this journey, I hope to show who we are at Project Veritas and what we do. In the process, I will:

  define journalism;

  explain that real journalism is America’s last saving grace;

  define what is required to do this type of journalism;

  explain that information-gathering should be understood as an activity, not an identity;

  show that Project Veritas has had more direct public policy impact than any comparable entity in the twenty-first century;

  confront specific objections raised against Project Veritas;

  communicate how the media is profoundly guilty of the very sins it lodges against us while sharing few of the virtues;

  detail the techniques in practice;

  reveal the consequences of doing our type of work.

  Not everyone has forgotten the spirit of the New Journalism of Tom Wolfe and others, the Pulitzer Prize–winning stings of the Chicago Sun-Times, the means-ends analysis of troublemaker Saul Alinsky, and the life-imperiling documentation of Samizdat writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. These are our influences, our guides. We envision our work not as a radical departure from traditional journalism but as a restoration of the same.

  What Is Journalism?

  “We are what we repeatedly do”; so said Aristotle or at least his interpreters. News-gathering is an act protected by the First Amendment. In that the amendment empowers all citizens to gather news whether they went to J-school or not, it follows that journalism is better seen as an activity rather than as an identity. Establishment journalists, however, cling to their identity as journalists. Their friends in government have gone so far as to initiate legislation to protect that status.

  Senator Dick Durbin wrote, “We must define a journalist and the constitutional statutory protections those journalists should receive.”2 Senator Charles Schumer introduced a bill that sought to define a “covered journalist” through the Orwellian sounding “Free Flow of Information Act” (S.987).3 This bill would strip the First Amendment rights of information-gatherers who did not meet Schumer’s definition. The definition runs 270 words long and is loaded with arbitrary benchmarks, tenure requirements, and willfully vague language specifying who exactly is covered. The obvious intent of this bill is to protect the mainstream media cartel and their cronies in government from those of us without credentials, those of us who approach journalism as an activity. The deep state does not and cannot trust us.

  Actually, anyone with a camera on his or her cell phone can be a journalist. Many times these citizens are more effective because they are closer to the scene of a given event and have less of an agenda than the professionals. When citizen journalism is as organized as it is at Project Veritas, it becomes a threat to the status quo. The establishment demands more accuracy from us than it does from its own credentialed pros. To reinforce their identity, these so-called “pros” dismiss us as “pranksters,” “provocateurs,” and “hoaxsters.” Recently, the Washington Post called me a “master of ceremonies” when referring to my anchor role on a video project. No matter. They can call me “SpongeBob SquarePants” if they like. The label does not shape our product, which we take very seriously. So seriously in fact, that we would be willing to go to jail to protect our sources just as any other serious journalist would. Any individual who truthfully informs the public is engaging in the act of journalism.

  For a century or more, theorists have been attempting to define the role of the journalist. “There can be no higher law in journalism,” said Walter Lippmann, “than to tell the truth and shame the devil.”4 For ethicist Jeffrey Olen, the journalist’s aim was simply to “serve the public’s right to know.”5 Investigative reporting, communications expert James Ettema believed, is specifically aimed at exposing matters of importance that “some person or group wants to keep secret.”6 By so doing, the journalist offers the community “an opportunity to test and affirm what is, and what is not, an outrage to the moral order.” Ultimately, Ettema argued, the journalist finds success “in unraveling human suffering that hides beneath binds of systemic failures—summoning righteous indignation not merely at the individual tragedy but also at the moral disorder and social breakdowns that the tragedy represents.” My friend and mentor Andrew Breitbart described the appropriate attitude of the journalist as “righteous indignation,” which was the title of his book.

  Ideally, journalists challenge the orthodoxy. If successful, their stories shift what is sometimes called the “Overton Window.” While working at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joseph Overton coined the term to describe the range of facts and policies that are viewed as politically acceptable to discuss.7 Donald Trump pushed that window open wider on the issues of illegal immigration and Islamic terrorism. Although much of the public welcomed the opening, his words inflamed the establishment. Journalists who prod the window open run the same risk. As Ray Bradbury observed in Fahrenheit 451, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.” And that is just what the mainstream media serves up to their audience: one side. The citizen journalist gives them the other.

  Why the Veritas Journalist Exists

  The mission of Project Veritas is “to investigate and expose institutional waste, fraud, abuse, and other misconduct in order to create a more ethical and transparent society.” This is not inherently a political mission. If our objective were to advance a political agenda, as journalists on both sides have admitted doing, we would have to reinforce that agenda time after time with editorial content. We don’t. We move on. We do not put words in our subjects’ mouths. We cannot create a reality where there is none. If we have any motivation at all, it is to hold the media and administrative state accountable. Not inherently “right wing” or “left wing,” we work the opportunities the major media choose to ignore.

  No ordinary American advocates for general waste, fraud, and abuse. No politician does either. That does not stop the political class from practicing—indeed perfecting—all of the above. So mired are so many lawmakers and administrators in everyday abuses that the Trumpian word “swamp” seems altogether appropriate to describe the contemporary deep state. For many of the swamp dwellers, the Constitution is not a guide but an obstacle. Without the journalist’s external light—and lots of light day after day, night after night—the swamp will not be drained.

  The Claremont Institute’s Michael Uhlmann describes well how the swamp has come to be. “A newer breed has come to dominate Congress, which now sees its self-interest less in legislating than in delegating legislative authority to departments and agencies,” he writes. “Such members console themselves with the thought, which is only sometimes true, that if a particular agency steps on a favored constituency’s toes, they can always intervene, while collecting campaign contributions from lobbyists benefiting from that intervention.”8

  Political author Charles Murray sees the swamp as deep and stagnant. “Restoration of limited government is not going to happen by winning presidential elections and getting the right people appointed to the Supreme Court,” he writes in By the People. Our government, he believes, has slipped into an “advanced state of institutional sclerosis.” Our legal system, he adds, has become “lawless” and “systemically corrupt.”9

  Electing Republicans to Congress is no more likely to drain the swamp than electing Democrats. Both parties prefer the muck pretty much as is. It is in most everyone’s self-interest to maintain a political apparatus that keeps his or her portfolio growing year after year. Without external pressure, the state will remain deep and swampy. That pressure has to come from citizens. Citizens must create new counterweights to expose the corruption within. For reasons I w
ill explain later, they can no longer count on the mainstream media to help. Charles Murray argues that one solution is civil disobedience. Another solution, our solution, is investigative journalism.

  The Project Veritas journalist has a profound faith in the power of a free people to make their own decisions regarding what is best for them and their families and, in the process, to create a great, lasting, and moral society. Public policy solutions become self-evident when the people in a democratic republic have access to unfiltered information.

  Our vision stands in stark contrast to the de facto vision of the mainstream media that detest a free people. They would say, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” They prefer to spoon-feed select information and final conclusions to the public rather than to provide individuals the raw information required to reach conclusions on their own. Instead of “news,” their audiences get relentless punditry, editorializing, and politically loaded programming. Post-election, for instance, the focus on Russia and identity politics in particular eroded the canons of journalism and devolved into near mania.

  To put pressure on the media and their deep state allies, we shock them with reality—cinema verité. Done well, cinema verité has the capacity to breach what Ettema and Theodore Glasser call “the threshold of outrage.”10 Our medium is video, usually undercover, supplemented and distributed by the people’s media, by the internet. We gather the information guerilla-style and distribute it the same way. This allows us to bypass traditional establishment channels and take our product directly to the people. You will see how this plays out in our (exciting!) account of the 2016 election campaign.

  The Results

  One defining characteristic of a journalist is that he or she gets results. Seymour Hersh single-handedly broke the story of the My Lai massacre. Woodward and Bernstein helped force President Nixon out of office. Rolling Stone’s Michael Hastings got Gen. Stanley McChrystal to resign. These results were impressive and lauded. “Great reporters exude a certain kind of electricity,” Rolling Stone’s Will Dana said of Hastings.11

  Given the historic respect for results-oriented journalism, I will argue that the media’s generalized contempt for the work of citizen journalists, ours in particular, is pure hypocrisy. As much respect as I have for some of these journalists, even a few still in the field, I am unable to identify any journalistic entity in the last ten years whose work has had more immediate impact on more corrupt individuals or organizations than Project Veritas. Today, journalists are rewarded not for challenging the establishment but for reinforcing it.

  In 2009, CBS’s Katie Couric won the esteemed Cronkite Award for her “extraordinary, persistent and detailed multi-part interviews with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.”12 No, she won the award by badgering Sarah Palin about what newspapers she read. That is how flippant journalism has become in the twenty-first century. At Project Veritas, we hold—at the risk of being targeted by our government—that skewering the sacred cows (and pigs) that feed off the administrative state is a far more worthy pastime for a journalist.

  Our critics can say what they will about Project Veritas, but they cannot deny we get results. In less than ten years, with undercover video as our primary medium, we have been able to accomplish the following:

  Project Veritas video evidence prompted Congress to propose and pass, and President Obama to sign, legislation defunding the corrupt $2 billion community organizing cartel known as ACORN. This came to pass in 2009 while Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced the termination of two top NPR executives, including a CEO, and inspired the House of Representatives to cut NPR funding.

  A Project Veritas video empowered Senator John McCain to grill Department of Homeland Security representatives about border security, referring to our work.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced New Hampshire to change voting laws twice, once in 2012 and again in 2016. The state now requires photo ID and in-state residency to vote.

  Project Veritas video evidence prompted overriding vetoes of legislation by the governor who sought our prosecution in New Hampshire.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced resignations of Medicaid staff in Ohio, Virginia, and Maine and inspired widespread worker retraining in entitlement programs.

  Project Veritas video evidence inspired Texas to open criminal investigations into voter fraud and prompted reactions from the attorney general and governor.

  Project Veritas video evidence inspired Virginia to change voter laws after catching a congressman’s son in the act of encouraging fraud.

  Project Veritas video evidence exposed a New York City election board commissioner acknowledging widespread voter fraud, leading to calls for his resignation by officials who did not want the truth to be told.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced the termination of three Common Core executives.

  Project Veritas video evidence exposing discussion of an illegal PAC (political action committee) prompted a Republican campaign treasurer to resign and the Republican state senate president Mike Ellis to drop out of a senate race.

  Project Veritas video evidence exposed teacher union mischief in several states leading to multiple terminations and investigations. Inspector generals in New York backed up our reports.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced the suspension and termination of four Obamacare navigators and led to defunding of the navigators program in Texas.

  Project Veritas video evidence caused the termination of two high-level Democratic operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign and was credited with shifting the momentum in the campaign. The videos were seen at least 22 million times in October 2016. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton discussed the videos in the final presidential debate.

  Project Veritas video evidence forced the Wisconsin attorney general to reopen a criminal investigation into voter fraud during the 2016 presidential election.

  Project Veritas video evidence enabled the FBI to arrest and convict three DisruptJ20 operatives in a criminal plot to put butyric acid in the ventilation system of the National Press Club.

  Project Veritas video evidence caused CNN major embarrassment by showing its staff ridiculing CNN’s own “Russia” coverage. The video prompted the deputy press secretary of the United States to “urge everyone to watch the videos.”

  The above is just a partial list. The fraud, lies, and criminal behavior we have uncovered have been so outrageous and the legislative consequences so undeniable that the mainstream media have been forced to pay heed, if not respect. In 2017, the Washington Post wrote of our DisruptJ20 investigation, “To O’Keefe, who for years has targeted liberal groups with undercover stings, the arrest validates his group and its controversial methods.”13 Said ABC’s George Stephanopoulos of an earlier sting, “An undercover upstart has dealt a major blow to the establishment.”14

  Writing for the Nation in a piece posted on the CBS News site, voting rights activist Brentin Mock described the effect of our journalism on the voter fraud debate as “jarring.” This compliment was about as left-handed as compliments get, but Mock at least admitted the obvious. “When you hear activists and state senators say we need voter ID laws because of voter fraud, instead of citing data, or even anecdotes, lately they’ve been citing O’Keefe.” Mock referred to a poll in which 64 percent of respondents registered their belief that voter fraud exists, and he attributed that high a number to “people like O’Keefe.”15

  Mock overstates our effectiveness. We did not carve out a new area of citizen interest. We confirmed suspicions. Through their own experience, many Americans had sensed something amiss at the polls. Despite their ample resources, the major media have almost universally refused to investigate this problem. Worse, they have routinely slighted or smeared those reporters who have been documenting voter fraud for decades. Our videos could not be dismissed that easily.