Thursday, December 30, 2021

James O'Keefe and His Lawyer Paul Calli at Restoration Weekend 2021 - Frontpagemag.com

 

by Frontpagemag.com

A guiding American principle: better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

 


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)

 

Frontpagemag.com

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/founder-project-veritas-james-okeefe-and-his-frontpagemagcom/

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