Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe is joined by his
lawyer Paul Calli in a powerful talk about truth, freedom and even more
revelations by Project Veritas, delivered at Restoration Weekend on Nov.
11th-14th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Don't miss this vital presentation in the video below. A transcript follows.
Transcript:
Paul Calli: Good afternoon. My name is Paul Calli. I have the honor and privilege to be James O'Keefe's lawyer.
(Cheers and applause)
Paul Calli: I wanted to share a quick few remarks and then sit down
so you can hear from the person that you all really want to hear from.
James has a mantra. And that is, I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees.
(Applause)
Paul Calli: That's his guiding principle. When the government attacks him, that's his guiding principle.
The Left's latest attack on Mr. O'Keefe came in the form of a sucker
punch to the First Amendment. And it didn't knock James on his feet;
it knocked him on his ass. There is one journalist in America who's
strong enough to get up, and not only to get up, but to get up and
fight. And that's James O'Keefe.
(Cheers and applause)
Paul Calli: I'll leave you with three things. James O'Keefe did
nothing wrong. There is no quarter for prisoners. There will be no
compromise; there will be no settlement.
(Applause)
Paul Calli: And James will win. He will come out on top. And he
will do it for all journalists. Because he believes in the First
Amendment more than anything else in his life. He will do it even for
the dishonest journalists on the left who wage a campaign of dishonesty
to try and undermine his legitimacy.
Please welcome James O'Keefe.
(Cheers and applause)
James O'Keefe: Thank you, Paul. Paul's a great man.
It's great to be with you all. I'm going to speak for about 30, 45
minutes here and maybe take a question or two, and talk about what has
happened and talk about what will happen at Project Veritas, our
organization.
A lot has happened since a year ago. And I'm going to take you on a
journey through some of it. And I'm going to start here with our
vision statement at Project Veritas. Many of you are familiar with what
we do, but I want to remind you about who we are.
Project Veritas gives people hope by being the custodians of
conscience. We are the vehicle that gives people the inspiration to act
and the permission to be change agents. We at Project Veritas are the
answer to the question, what can I do? You hear that all the time,
right? What can I do? In fact, yesterday, everyone all came up to me
to say, I don't know what to do. How can I help, is what people say.
That's what they say. And we seek to be the answer to that question.
Now over the last year, what's changed in our society, especially
with COVID, is that people have been willing to give up their jobs for
the public's right to know, effectively jumping on a grenade, giving up
their livelihood so people know what's going on. That didn't used to be
the case. I'm a reporter. What we do is journalism. And it was hard
to get someone on the inside of one of these institutions to come out.
Might take me a year or two to convince them.
But these days, people are coming out in spades. Whether it's this
guy, Morgan Kahmann from Facebook, who blew the whistle on the company
over the summer; whether it's -- and by the way, Morgan Kahmann was
fired by Facebook, but he raised half a million dollars online to pay
for his legal bills. Or maybe it was this woman in Fox 26, which is a
local affiliate in Texas, blowing the whistle on her own news station.
And she did it with such flair.
(Clip plays)
Anchor: Fox 26 reporter Ivory Hecker is live in Montgomery County to take a look at that aspect.
Ivory Hecker: Thanks, guys, that's right.
Before we get to that story, I want to let you, the viewers, know
that FoxCorp has been muzzling me to keep certain information from you,
the viewers. And from what I'm gathering, I am not the only reporter
being subjected to this. I am going to be releasing some recordings
about what goes on behind the scenes at Fox. Because it applies to you,
the viewers. I found a nonprofit journalism group called Project
Veritas that's going to help put that out tomorrow, so tune into them.
But as for this heatwave across Texas, you can see what it's doing to AC units ...
(Clip ends)
(Cheers and applause)
James O'Keefe: Extraordinary. But because of what Ivory did, it
prompted a dozen other people. Because people don't know they have the
permission to do this unless someone else does it. Talk is cheap; words
mean nothing. Actions are the only thing that matters in this life.
Watching Ivory, a different anchor for CBS -- this is in Michigan -- did the same thing.
(Clip begins)
Anchor: Showers moving in around 8:00 a.m.
And speaking of a brand-new week, I will be sitting down this week
with Project Veritas to discuss the discrimination that CBS is enforcing
upon its employees. Tune in to Project Veritas for my full story.
Now, later Monday we rotate our showers in ...
(Clip ends)
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: And she raised a bunch of money that she could propel
herself to a journalism career. We've had so many of these people
inside of pharmaceutical companies, banks, the federal -- we've had
Department of Homeland Security people on the border. We've had a guy
inside CNN, a guy inside the Postal department, a guy inside Google. We
had this guy inside of Hasbro Toy Companies blow the whistle on
critical race theory.
(Clip begins)
David Johnson: My name is David Johnson. I'm a packaging engineer
for Hasbro. They are attempting to covertly push CRT, critical race
theory, through branding and messaging through their products.
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: These people were coming [ to ] us [ from ] within
the Department of Health and Human -- this woman, Jody, recorded things
inside the federal government about the effects of the vaccine. And
these stories were trending on Twitter, even though Project Veritas and
myself are banned on Twitter!
Audience: Yeah!
James O'Keefe: I mean, I'm suing Twitter for defamation, and the stories still trend on Twitter.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: And Congress got involved. We even exposed a
pharmaceutical executive at Pfizer, this woman named Vanessa Gelman.
She's the vice president of Pfizer. By the way, this is the
investigative journalism thingy that the Washington Post should be doing
and the New York Times should be doing; all the President's men, they
should be exposing. But nobody's exposing the pharmaceutical
companies. Nobody's exposing the corruption inside the federal
government. They're working with a symbiotic relationship with the
federal government via reciprocity of interest. Sources that are
presumed credible.
We go after Vanessa Gelman, we expose Vanessa Gelman at Pfizer
Corporation. Because in her email she said, we don't want the public to
know that in the development of this vaccine there contained fetal
cells. We don't want the public to know that. Her words, not mine. I
did not make that claim. It was not a claim that I made; it was a claim
the vice president of Pfizer made.
So our reporters showed up on the street with a microphone, as
reporters do. Mike Wallace used to do it. And she ran away from us.
(Clip begins)
Reporter: Hey, Vanessa? Vanessa Gelman, I'm a reporter with Project
Veritas. Miss, why did you send emails telling Pfizer employees not to
report that you guys were using fetal cell lining, Miss? What else are
you hiding from the public today? Miss, what else are you hiding from
the public? The public needs to know.
Well, there you have it. We wanted to ask her -- hey, Vanessa?
Vanessa Gelman, I'm a reporter with Project Veritas. Miss, why did you
send emails telling Pfizer employees not to report that you guys were
using fetal cell ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: Why is she running away?
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: All we did was quote her email.
And, you see, that's the purpose of journalism. It's to make public
information that powerful people wish to keep secrete for the wrong
reasons. That's what journalists do.
But these days, journalists, trademark, don't do that. They only
give you sanctioned information the powers that be want you to know.
That's not journalism; that's what Orwell would describe as public
relations.
Now I'm telling you all these stories as a precursor to what I'm
about to tell you. By the way, this is CNN. This is another story we
did. We would not know this but not for undercover journalists and
insiders within CNN exposing this.
Listen to this man, who's the control room director at CNN. Of
course, none of this will shock you. But it still shocks you that the
guy actually says it out loud.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: I think I -- I think we got him through this
term. [Indiscernible] shots of him jogging, him in aviator shades. And
like you paint him as a young geriatric ...
Unidentified Speaker: We were creating a story there that we didn't
know anything about, you know. We were -- so that's -- I think that's
probably it ...
Unidentified Speaker: Look what we did. We got Trump out. I am a
hundred percent gonna' say it and a hundred percent believe it, that if
it wasn't for CNN, I don't know that Trump would've got voted out ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: A CNN technological director saying that they're a
political party designed to "get Trump out of office." None of that
surprises you. But my question is, why aren't they saying that
publicly? Are they ashamed of that? Is that mission statement of
theirs something they want to keep secret from the public? And my
question is, why? Just be honest. It's really simple. Just be honest.
Oh, and by the way, Charlie Chester at CNN says COVID gangbusters with ratings.
(Clip begins)
Charlie Chester: COVID gangbusters with [ rating ] ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: In fact, he brags about all the deaths. He says, we
want the deaths to be higher so that we can get more ratings.
(Clip begins)
Charlie Chester: Which is why we constantly have the death toll on
the side. Let's make it higher. Like why isn't it high enough, you
know, today? Like it would make our point better if it was higher ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: Why isn't it higher? I want the deaths to be higher. Why can't the numbers be higher?
These are the news organizations, ladies and gentlemen, of this
country. And they're not that -- you say, well, no one watches CNN.
Well, you'd be wrong. Because while nobody watches CNN, Google and
Twitter and Facebook prefer CNN in all their algorithms, so that your
kids and your grandchildren see this crap on their Instagram feed. And
they say the quiet part out loud.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Like fear really attracts numbers ... fear is
the thing that keeps you tuned in ... if it bleeds, it leads.
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: Fear. He says fear.
This is a very important point that I'll return to in a minute. The
CNN control room director says it's all about fear. Fear drives our
ratings. Fear keeps you tuned in, is what he says.
So the last insider thing I'll show you is we had someone within CNN
give us access to the phone calls at 9:00 a.m. with CEO and President
Jeff Zucker, who's the head of CNN, on those phone calls. And I made a
decision to dial into the call and say hello to the president of CNN and
tell him that we've been recording for two months.
(Laughter)
(Clip begins)
James O'Keefe: Hey, Jeff Zucker, you there? Hey.
Jeff Zucker: Yes?
James O'Keefe: Hey, this is James O'Keefe. We've been listening to
your CNN calls for basically two months and recording everything. Just
wanted to ask you some questions, if you have a minute. You still feel
you're the most trusted name in news? Because I have to say, from what
I've been hearing on these phone calls, I don't know about that. I
mean, we got a lot of recordings that indicate you're not really that
independent of a journalist.
Jeff Zucker: Okay. Thank you for -- thank you for your comments.
Gentlemen, in light of that, I think what we'll do is we'll set up a new system ...
(Clip ends)
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: Well, Jeff, guess what? We're on your new system.
(Laughter and applause)
James O'Keefe: They're always more afraid about being caught rather
than fixing the underlying behavior. Maybe just don't do unethical
things. We behave like there's 12 jurors always watching at Project --
in fact, that's one of our stated ethical rules as part of our
journalism. We always behave like people are watching us.
Our whistleblowers have raised a lot of money on this website,
GiveSendGo, because GoFundMe banned us. It's absurd what's happening in
this country. But the people of this country have stood up. And all
of these people -- whether they work for the Department of Health and
Human Services, Facebook, all these organizations -- have really taken
off.
Now, Veritas does undercover journalism. We're not spies. Spies
weaponize information for state interests. We reveal information for
the public interest. We do use undercover techniques, much like Upton
Sinclair, who you all read about in high school: used undercover
techniques when he got access to the meat packing facilities in
Chicago. Or other journalists in United States and elsewhere who go
undercover. They used to do this in the 1990s at ABC News. They
stopped doing it because they didn't want to take on those in power, and
they got sued a lot. More on that a minute.
Which leads me to the recent events of the last 10 days. All those
sources that we have at Veritas inside Google and Department of Homeland
Security and the Border Patrol people and Facebook -- well, my home was
raided by the FBI eight days ago at 6:00 a.m. And two of my colleagues
were raided. And I woke up to a large banging on my door. I opened
the door, and there were 10 FBI agents with white blinding lights. They
turned me around, handcuffed me and threw me against the wall of my
hallway apartment while I was in my underwear. They raided my apartment
and took both of my two iPhones. And on those phones were some of our
sources and our reporters' notes related to all the things that we have
and will be doing. It's crazy.
But don't take my word for it. I'm going to read and show you some
people who don't necessarily agree with you politically, but they also
think that it's a violation of the First Amendment. First I'm going to
show this clip.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: ... two properties linked to Project Veritas
have been raided by federal agents. Project Veritas -- they are a news
organization, are they not?
Unidentified Speaker: Yeah, they are a news organization. They should be treated as such ...
Unidentified Speaker: Project Veritas did the right thing. They
didn't publish this because they couldn't verify the authenticity of the
documents. What is so bewildering about this is why in the world are
the feds even involved in this? Let's assume it's a theft or a
burglary. It's not a federal crime. Here, this would be a state
crime. There's enormous conflict of interest, which under federal
regulations require ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: It goes on. But people -- law professors,
constitutional litigators, questioning what on earth -- as a reporter I
have a constitutionally protected right for a source to come [ with ] me
for information. We don't know if it was stolen. But even if it was,
which we have no reason to believe it was, you're protected by United
States Supreme Court -- whether it's the Pentagon Papers, Bartnicki v.
Vopper 2001 -- to publish this information, which we by the way did not
publish.
The New York Times reporter, Ben -- this is extraordinary -- the New
York Times reporter, Ben Smith, said, I don't think journalists should
be cheerleading the FBI raid on James O'Keefe. I haven't seen people
like this come to our defense in a long time.
You had -- a judge ordered yesterday that a federal court has just
ordered the Department of Justice to stop extracting data from my
phone. You had the Center for Freedom for Press: "I know I'm going to
get two dozen replies to this tweet saying, 'But O'Keefe's not a
journalist.' Read the statute. It doesn't matter." There are laws in
this country that protect journalists. "I'm sorry, but this is worrying
from a press freedom --" This is Trevor Tim from Ed Snowden's
organization. These are not people who agree with you. And they're
defending Project Veritas. Because there are certain things in this
country that are so fundamental.
And I actually believe -- and many of you may not agree with me, but
I'm going to go and -- I actually believe that what unites us in this
country is so much more powerful than what divides us; that the First
Amendment --
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: -- the right to repeat to somebody else what someone
shows you or tells you is a fundamental human right that goes back to
Cicero. And they're trying to take it away from us. Why? I don't know
the answer to that question, because I don't want to speculate. But I
will read you headlines that other people have written. "This sure looks
like Biden's DOJ persecuting an opposition journalist." This is
Politico this morning. Josh Gerstein. Not a fan of Project Veritas.
"FBI raid on Project Veritas founder's home sparks questions about press
freedom." So they're concerned about what is going on.
Yesterday, the New York Times, a publication which I'm currently
suing for defamation and winning -- more on that in a moment -- the New
York Times published an attorney-client privileged communications with
our lawyers; memos. They were giving us counsel on how to avoid
breaking laws. Quite a story. I'm going to let one of our attorneys
tell you what happened.
(Clip begins)
Attorney: You know, what we have right now is a very disturbing
situation of the U.S. Attorney's Office and/or the FBI tipping off the
New York Times to each of the raids on Project Veritas' current and
former employees last week. We know that because minutes after these
raids occurred, they got calls from the New York Times, which was the
only journalism outlet that knew about it ... and they published this
hit piece today, which is really despicable. I don't think I've ever
seen this low from the New York Times before, to publish people's
private legal communications. And by the way, what does it prove, New
York Times? All it proves is that Project Veritas is an honest and
thoughtful journalistic organization that sought legal advice before
making various publications. And ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: They published our lawyer correspondence with the New
York Times, a publication that we are suing for defamation. And I'm
proud to say that after we filed that defamation lawsuit -- and I'll
talk about this in a moment -- against the paper of record, a judge in
New York State ruled that -- we got past motion to dismiss. We defeated
the motion to dismiss. We're one of the handful of people who have
done that in the last 50 years. I'm going to show you what happened in
the New York Times case.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: Back in October of 2020, recorded a man -- actually,
we didn't record him; he recorded himself, and we just took the video
off his snapchat -- bragging about all the ballots he was harvesting.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Numbers don't lie. Numbers don't lie. [Indiscernible] [ have ] some ballots.
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: We even recorded an interaction between two voters in
Minneapolis, with an actual exchange of money for a ballot.
(Video begins)
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible]
(Video ends)
James O'Keefe: You could actually see the exchange of money.
There's the ballot harvester. There's the voter. And there's the cash
in exchange for the ballot.
We got a man on tape saying that it's illegal what they were doing, but he does not care.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: That's [ illegal ].
Unidentified Speaker: [ You don't get ] [indiscernible].
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible] wonderful.
Unidentified Speaker: [ How much are those ]?
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible].
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: He was given money so he could vote.
So the New York Times comes out with a front-page -- A-section story
saying, "Project Veritas releases misleading video, part of what
experts call a coordinated disinformation campaign." The block quote
says I was "making claims without evidence." Are you kidding me? All
we did was show you evidence. Literally, people's faces on tape
bragging about how they're breaking the law, and nobody cares.
So we sued the New York Times for defamation, and we won a historic victory in that case, getting past motion to dismiss.
(Cheers and applause)
James O'Keefe: And I'm going to read it to you, because it's hard to
see. "While it has received little coverage in the media, the group
Project Veritas won a major victory against the New York Times this week
in a defamation case. In a 16-page decision, New York Supreme Court
Judge Charles Wood ruled against the newspaper's motion to dismiss and
found that Veritas had shown sufficient evidence the Times might've been
motivated by actual malice, with a reckless disregard for the truth."
Listen to the judge in New York. Listen to what this judge said.
(Clip begins)
Judge Charles Wood: The articles that are the subject of this action
called the video "deceptive." But the dictionary definitions of
"disinformation" and "deceptive" provided by defendant's counsel
certainly apply to Astor's and Hsu's failure to note that they injected
their opinions in news articles, as they now claim.
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: They injected their opinions in news articles. The
New York Times defense in court was that, Your Honor, it's just our
opinion. It's just our opinion. To which the judge said, well, why the
hell are you putting your opinion in the first sentence of a news
article that people are taking as fact?
This is everything, ladies and gentlemen, this is everything. This
is why our country's in the position that it's in. This is why people
don't know what's going on, because you have crap like this.
They admitted in all these documents that they got the facts wrong,
but they still haven't corrected the article. And in the legal motions
the New York Times filed in court, they said, well, James can't sue us
for defamation. And the rationale they gave was my reputation is so
bad, and they cited Wikipedia!
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: I'm not making this up. I'm not sure these New York
Times lawyers thought I was going to make videos and publish all these
legal documents, but of course I did. And in the footnotes, well,
Veritas' reputation is bad because Wikipedia says so. So we confronted
the people of the New York Times in the street about that. See, Project
Veritas runs from nothing, we hide from nothing, we go up to them in
the street with a camera.
(Cheers and applause)
James O'Keefe: We confronted the executive editor of the New York
Times in the street in Los Angeles and said, why the hell are you citing
Wikipedia?
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Wikipedia, your lawyer citing Wikipedia. Yes.
Unidentified Speaker: (Laughter)
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: And he laughed like a hyena. I wonder how much money
Dean Baquet was paying his PR consultants? If confronted in the
street, laugh really loudly.
We confronted him again.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: How you been? I just wanted to check in and
see if you're still laughing ... between us, only one of us --
Unidentified Speaker: Nothing.
Unidentified Speaker: -- has had a New York State Supreme Court
judge call us deceptive disinformation. Wasn't us, it was you. What do
you have to say to that?
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: That's what we do. And Project Veritas has never lost a lawsuit.
(Cheers and applause)
James O'Keefe: Now, the man that just introduced me, Paul Calli, is
defending us in another lawsuit. We were sued by Democracy Partners,
and I don't have time to get into all that. But I will show you a
deposition tape that's publicly available. Paul Calli, my attorney,
cross-examined this woman, who was responsible for recruiting plaintiffs
to sue Project Veritas. We won most of those lawsuits. One or two of
them are still ongoing.
But I want to show you an exercise in Orwell's doublethink. I want
to show you how extraordinary it is, when you get these people under
oath, and they're forced to confront the reality. We will depose the
New York Times editors under oath, and it's a very big deal. Because
when you're under oath, circumstances change. This is Lauren Windsor,
who worked alongside Bob Creamer and some of these organizations
alongside Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.
Listen to this.
(Clip begins)
Lauren Windsor: You been to the rape [ bar ]?
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible]
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible] girl.
Paul Calli: Did you hear the statement, "have you been to the rape bar?"
Lauren Windsor: I did.
Paul Calli: Who said that?
Lauren Windsor: That was me.
Paul Calli: Okay. Did you eventually publish a video of these events?
Lauren Windsor: I published a video of events that occurred earlier that evening.
Paul Calli: Ah. So you edited out these parts where -- these first
two parts where you and Ryan Clayton were confronting Ms. Maass? You
didn't include --
Lauren Windsor: I object to your characterization of my actions.
Paul Calli: Okay. Well, you're not a lawyer. So your lawyer's
here, and he'll object for you. So what I'm asking you is --
Lauren Windsor: Well, I disagree with your characterization of my actions.
Paul Calli: Which part? Which part?
Lauren Windsor: That I edited anything out.
Paul Calli: Oh, okay. So what did you do that these parts didn't make the video?
Lauren Windsor: So it's called editing.
(Clip ends)
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: Now do you understand? Do you understand the people
that we're dealing with here? Do you understand George Orwell's
doublethink? To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in
them. To forget any fact that becomes inconvenient, and then when it
becomes necessary, to draw it back from oblivion. To deny the existence
of objective reality, all the while to ostensibly abandon reality and
repeat it right back after contradicting yourself. This is literally
from "1984."
And I do believe that people are going to see it for what it is. I
do believe that people are going to see it for -- and listen to this.
This is the follow-up that Paul asked Lauren Windsor.
(Clip begins)
Paul Calli: Did those last two statements make your published final version of this confrontation with Ms. Maass?
Lauren Windsor: I don't believe so.
Paul Calli: Why not?
Lauren Windsor: Because it wasn't necessary in the narrative that we were trying to produce ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: It wasn't necessary in the narrative. They accuse us of that which they are guilty of.
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: They accuse us of that which they are guilty of.
They are what they hate. They represent -- they're ostensibly that
which they are fighting. They hate themselves. They project onto me
everything: doctoring videos, breaking laws, making horrible sexual
comments to women. All of this is what they do. But they've accused me
of that which they're guilty of.
And if you think, well, that's just some low-level whatever -- this
is the editorial page editor of the New York Times, also being deposed.
Project Veritas obtained this videotape of James Bennett. And if you
thought Lauren Windsor was funny, check this out. This is the editorial
page editor of the New York Times under oath in a deposition.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Do you consider this map to be political incitement?
James Bennett: In the sense I was using the term that day in our
editorial, yeah. I do. I just think it's using violent imagery. I
read those as gun sites. I just don't think we should import that kind
of language --
James O'Keefe: Wait for it.
James Bennett: -- to talk about our political adversaries. I wish politicians wouldn't do it.
Unidentified Speaker: Do you consider that to be political incitement?
James Bennett: I understand what you're asking me and the
comparison you're drawing. I don't -- those don't look like gun sites
to me. I don't know what they're meant to represent. I mean, they're
meant to represent -- it says targeting strategy --
Unidentified Speaker: Do they look like bullseyes?
James Bennett: They -- no, now you say that, yeah. I could see that.
Unidentified Speaker: What are bullseyes used for?
James Bennett: Targeting. And target practice.
Unidentified Speaker: With weapons?
James Bennett: Yeah.
(Clip ends)
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: George Orwell's doublethink. And I was born in the year 1984, was kind of appropriate.
We also -- we always confront these people. Nobody does what
Project Veritas does. By the way, nobody does what Project Veritas
does. What that means is there's nowhere else for these sources to go
to except for Project Veritas, which makes the recent events all the
more troubling, because it creates a chilling effect. Which is
precisely what the laws of the First Amendment are designed to oppose.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Mr. Bennett, you were sued for defamation.
You were the op-ed page for the New York Times. You're on video
admitting, admitting that you made an omission of a false claim with a
Republican political action committee. You were deposed. We've
obtained a videotape of your deposition.
James Bennett: I didn't admit to any --
Unidentified Speaker: See this?
James Bennett: [Indiscernible] --
Unidentified Speaker: You admitted under oath ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: That's what Project Veritas does. We confront them in the street, and we hold them accountable.
Now I'm running out -- I'm going to show you one or two more things,
and then I'm going to close. We talk about the FBI targeting
journalists. FBI has also targeted parents. This is in California. A
source, a source, confronted us -- I'm sorry, approached us with a
picture of an Antifa flag in a classroom back in September. It showed
an Antifa flag in the public school classroom. We sent an undercover
reporter to meet with a teacher from that school. And he told us that
he wanted to scare the eff out of his kids and turn them into
revolutionaries. This is in Sacramento, California.
(Clip begins)
Gabriel Gipe: I have 180 days to turn them into revolutionaries.
Unidentified Speaker: How do you do that? How do you --
Gabriel Gipe: Scare the fuck out of them ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: Scare the eff out of my students and turn them into revolutionaries. We confronted this man.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: Gabriel? Hello, how are you? I am a journalist with Project Veritas.
Gabriel Gipe: Okay.
Unidentified Speaker: Nice to talk with you.
Unidentified Speaker: Why are you --
James O'Keefe: He's wearing a hammer and sickle shirt.
Unidentified Speaker: If you don't mind my colleague recording, we
are recording. But I think you're going to be more interested in what I
have to say here.
Gabriel Gipe: I don't feel comfortable with this.
Unidentified Speaker: [Indiscernible].
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: He doesn't feel comfortable with this, which is
ironic, because he was quoted on hidden camera saying he wants to make
his students feel uncomfortable. But an extraordinary thing happened
after these tapes. This is probably the most amazing moment in Project
Veritas history. It happened two months ago. Parents overwhelmed the
school board meetings in Sacramento. And these are not Republicans or
Democrats, or left or right. These are just ordinary people under
extraordinary pressure.
Listen to some of what these people said.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: The second thing is, the reason why my
daughter is standing behind me is because my job as her parent is to
protect her from anybody that has ill will towards her. So being that
this is her first year at this high school, that is world-renowned --
and everybody knows about this school. It's so perfect, and everybody
does everything right. The first time my daughter tells me, and she
goes against my wishes to come out of a classroom that's disruptive to
her wellbeing, I have an issue.
Unidentified Speaker: Yes. Yes!
Unidentified Speaker: Yup.
Unidentified Speaker: I am very articulate. My children are very
well read. They are -- they speak their opinion. They make sure that
they are clear in what they do and do not like. And for the fact that
my 17-year-old daughter had to come to me, and said, Mom, you don't
understand. He's -- let me explain. This means that in two weeks, in
13 days, he was allowed to change my daughter's mind about some fascist
crap!
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: They were pissed. They were pissed.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: And these are people who don't necessarily
politically agree with you. They're not right-wing, they're not
left-wing; they're just people.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: What has been exposed about Gabriel Gipe by Project Veritas is exactly what I was concerned about ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: And they overwhelmed the school board meeting as the
superintendents and board members secretly left the meeting and got in
their Tesla cars and drove away.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: It's the board members.
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: They left the school board meeting. But mainstream media was forced to cover all of it.
(Clip begins)
Unidentified Speaker: For the past month, Gabriel Gipe has been put
on paid administrative leave. Tonight, the school board making an
official decision to fire him. Now supporters ...
(Clip ends)
James O'Keefe: They made the decision to fire the teacher.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: And you might say, well, that's not enough. Okay. Well, what would you do? You got to start somewhere.
Unidentified Speaker: It's a good start.
James O'Keefe: You got to start somewhere. You know how hard it is to fire a teacher in California?
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: You all know about that. What if there was 10,000
cameras in all these places? What if we had 50,000 whistleblowers, but
they need a place to go? They need to go to Project Veritas. They need
an army of people exposing them everywhere.
And I'm going to close here with just a personal anecdote, okay,
about me. Maybe something you don't know about me. I'm going to try
not to get emotional here as I talk about this. About resilience.
I was born in 1984, right? This is my dad, my mom. We were not the
product of wealthy circumstances; probably a middle-class, lower
middle-class background. I grew up in New Jersey in this ratty old
house that my father and grandfather decided to fix up, thinking that we
might rent half of it out to pay our bills. That's my grandfather.
The house was in such bad shape it was almost condemned. So my dad
solicited the help of my grandfather, who's a former lineman at the
Niagara Mohawk electrical company in New York State, from Olean, New
York, which is upstate New York. My grandfather was dyslexic. But he
could build things out of nothing with scrap materials he found on the
side of the road.
When I was five years old, in about the year 1989, the three of us
began working together. In the beginning, I would just hand them
tools. I didn't really know what I was -- I didn't really like the
work, actually.
(Laughter)
James O'Keefe: I was more of a creative type. My father, to this
day, probably the hardest-working man I've ever known. People kept
telling him that things couldn't be done, and he found a way, or he
engineered a way. That's me and my dad working when I was six years
old.
As I got older, every year I was forced to do more than hand them
tools: paint, plumb, roof; I mean, literally everything. And I didn't
like it. In fact, I hated it. And my grandfather would supervise me
and basically say, you do what you have to do. He was Irish. That's
what he looked like. It was dirty work every weekend. And some nights
after school, I would be forced to do this work.
A couple years later, the house was finished. And it was such an
impressive achievement, the State of New Jersey gave my parents an
award.
Shortly thereafter, the house burned down.
Audience: Aww.
James O'Keefe: House fire came, destroyed most of what we spent so
long building and restoring. A tenant had put a mattress next to the
furnace by accident. People in town again said the house could not be
saved. My grandfather said, we'll fix it up again. We'll make it look
nice again. He moved into our attic as we commenced work.
For the next two years, my sister, mother and father went back to
work doing all the same thing all over again. My grandfather never
retired. He lived at home until he had a stroke at age 80. He was on a
ladder at age 80.
Some years later, I was arrested by the FBI at 25 years old. I
stood falsely accused, a political prisoner for investigations I'd
done. I was released from jail. I spent three years on federal
probation for a Class B misdemeanor. It was so unheard of at the time
that people were shocked. I was confined under federal supervision from
age 25 to age 29 with no organization and no money. Literally,
nothing. And I needed a place to land.
The carriage house, that ratty old home that was the first thing
that began my life, with my arm down sewage pipes and scraping off paint
chips, became the first Project Veritas office.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: I was not able to travel without permission from a
judge, a U.S. attorney and a probation officer. So I started to ship
the cameras to other people. And that's how Project Veritas was born.
In 2015, we expanded into a new operation in just the suburbs of New
York. My sister was the architect of this building. And Project
Veritas was born. And all of the U.S. attorneys -- not all; well, many
of the U.S. attorneys in that case, where I was arrested, not only
resigned in disgrace but were disbarred for what they did.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: And that was what our office looked like as of a few months ago.
So I've learned resilience in my life. And I just want to close
with this. Because I want to go back to this concept of fear. Yes, I
was raided. And it was terrifying. Not so much the raid but the night
after. The night after the raid, I could not sleep. The punishment is
the process. The process is the punishment. And it was terrifying to
me, at least for a little while.
But what I've learned from the stuff I've been through -- and it's
quite a bit for a 37-year-old guy -- is that I think that to be awesome,
one cannot live in fear. And it's the only thing I know to be
absolute. I've learned from the New Orleans experience that I will
never bear false witness. I will never live by lies. And to quote the
Psalms, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall
fear no evil, for You are with me. For you are with me.
(Applause)
James O'Keefe: So many people are afraid. History shows us that two
percent want -- they want the unjust outcome. But 98 percent of people
don't want it, but they're too afraid to stand up. They don't follow
their conscience. They're afraid to tell the truth.
But it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're not afraid.
And I know the politics of fear. I've lived through it for those years,
10 years ago, when they took everything away from me and put me in
shackles. But then I was reminded to why we started all this, why we
started Veritas. And what's lost in everything, what's lost is any
sense of right and wrong. The importance to do the right thing no
matter the outcome.
And what I learned from everything was this, again: I will not bear
false witness. I will not live by lies. I will not let the politics of
fear destroy me or destroy this country. I will always tell the truth
no matter the outcome. I shall fear no evil. Because I have faith that
sunlight is the best disinfectant and that light will defeat darkness.
I will not bear false witness. I know good will defeat evil in the
end. And I genuinely believe that the hunter will become the hunted.
Thank you.
(Cheers and applause)
