As the reader will recall, CNN’s John Bonifield said much the same thing. “I think there are a lot of liberal viewers who want to see Trump really get scrutinized,” he told our undercover reporter in Atlanta, “but I think if we had behaved that way with President Obama, I think our viewers would have been turned off.” He added, “Trump is good for business right now.”
On October 18, my cameraman and I waited outside the Brooklyn home of the Times’s deputy managing editor, Clifford Levy, to get an update on the employment status of Nick Dudich and Des Shoe. Dudich’s name had been removed from the Times’s phone directory. For that matter, it had been removed from LinkedIn. As I see it, Dudich and Shoe had made the mistake of telling the truth about the real New York Times and were likely to be punished for their honesty.
An inauspicious middle-aged man, as gray as the Gray Lady, Levy left his home on schedule. I tried my polite best to get him to answer a few salient questions but could not even get a “no comment” out of him. I finally asked him if he agreed with Dean Baquet’s assessment of me as a “sinner,” but he would not bite on that either. He scurried off in silence, but with at least half a sense of how the thousands of people the Times has hounded, deserving or otherwise, must have felt.
The following day, we dropped still another video, this one with a fair-minded IT consultant who has worked with the New York Times for twenty years. Although not involved in shaping the paper’s editorial product, Todd Gordon has had a wide-ranging exposure to the company’s corporate culture. When the Project Veritas undercover asked him if he ever met a Trump supporter at the Times, Gordon did not have to think hard to come up with an answer: “Not one, not one. Everyone hates him. They hate him like the plague, dude.”72
The hatred for Trump is so universal and so visceral at the Times that there is no way it cannot deform the news coverage. As Todd Gordon, told us, “I’m like, ‘Beautiful day today,’ and they’re like, ‘As good as it could be, fuck Trump.’ Everywhere I go, everywhere I go, they’re like, ‘As good as it could be, but we’re fucked.’ ” When asked if this hatred causes the Times to report unfairly on Trump, Gordon responded, “100 percent, 100 percent!”
Shoe described the current state of affairs as a “conundrum.” By skewing left, the major media have been cultivating an increasingly left-leaning audience. To preserve their credibility, however, the major media still have to feign objectivity. The problem is that if they actually practiced objective journalism, they would alienate the audience their slanted news has attracted. As a result, America’s mainstream publishers and editors are living as much a lie as the publishers and editors at Pravda. Truth takes a back seat to money, and objectivity takes a back seat to politics. From the editors who dictate the paper’s coverage to the journalists who sway the public with their reporting, corruption is inescapable. Indeed, it is part of the business model. I have to sympathize with the publishers of Pravda. They were working with a gun to their heads. Their American counterparts have no such excuse.
A more fundamental difference between the American Pravda and the Soviet original, however, is in the mind-set of their respective audiences. The readers of the New York Times want and need to be lied to and not just about President Trump. Those lies sustain their worldview and feed their anger on any number of issues. Pravda readers were much more jaded. They may not have known the truth, but after decades of manufactured news, they knew a lie when they saw one.
We judged the Times exposé to be a success. In exposing the paper’s unsustainable conundrum, we inspired the paper’s executive editor to respond to “Despicable Me” and forced the Times to change its social media policy. By and large, the Times’s allies in the major media pretended not to notice, but there were exceptions. Newsweek chose to slice and dice us with an editorial that began, “James O’Keefe Wants You to Think That He’s a Journalist.” Dean Baquet could not have said it better himself. Like so many others in the print media whose enterprise is sinking, Newsweek’s Alexander Nazaryan clings to the identity of “journalist” like a life vest.
Twitter, of course, was alive with sophomoric scorn from the blue checkmark crowd. Tweeted Erin Gloria Ryan of the Daily Beast, “lol an IT contractor has about as much knowledge of how editorial sourcing works as your average journalist has about tech support.”73 Of course we were not talking editorial with Gordon but corporate culture. After twenty years on the job, he seemed to have a handle on it.
In the way of explanation, Twitter gives out a “blue verified badge” in the form of a checkmark to those sources “determined to be an account of public interest.” Ryan—“Scarin Gloria Ryan” as she is known on Twitter—has 2,500 followers on Twitter and a blue checkmark. I have 350,000 followers and no checkmark. This is the way Twitter works.
Long gone was the urge to debate these people. This was, after all, mid-October in Westchester County. Walking through the streets of Mamaroneck, the air brisk, the trees alive in their reds and yellows and ambers, I could reflect on why we do what we do. The people who live here are the people who make New York work. They are the ones who fight New York’s fires, police its streets, conduct its trains, drive its cabs, teach its children, move its garbage. They have a better sense of the way the world turns than the people who think they turn it.
“You’re that investigative reporter guy! Drinks on me,” said a local bartender I had not seen before. “I watch all your stuff!” said a young man in my gym. “Aren’t you afraid that they’re going to try to harm you?” said a third person and a fourth and a fifth. This last question has become a constant refrain among the people who follow our work. Now in my early thirties, I have begun to start considering what that all means.
At Project Veritas, we wake up every morning with the humble and profound realization that the whole system—media, legal, political—is lined up against us. As much as I enjoy the battle, I wish it were otherwise. No one likes to be called “despicable.” TV stations continue to spike our stories. The major media try their best to ignore us, hoping we have not infiltrated their newsrooms. The blue checkmark crowd watches from a distance, waiting to catch us in a misstep. When we confront their people on the street, as we did with the Times’s Clifford Levy and Dean Baquet, they slither away in silence. The big media win by shining light on others. They lose when the light shines on them.
We are quiet too, but in a different way. The one regular sound you will hear from Project Veritas is that of our videos dropping with more and more frequency. In a media universe crowded with opinion and conjecture, we offer the unguarded words of those on whom we report and just enough commentary to put those words in context. The way forward for us is not to get covered by the media but to become the media, not to sit at their table but to host the table where others sit. As long as I have the privilege of being allowed to share the truth with the American people, we will stick to our guiding philosophy. We don’t need a handbook to explain it. We just need three words. Content is king.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my mother and father, Deborah and James O’Keefe Jr., who were there for me in the beginning, who were by my side when there was nothing in me “except the will which says . . . hold on.” I’d like to thank my sister, Amanda, who in the face of difficult and untrue accusations reminded me of who I am.
To Don and Dana of California who taught me how to vacation and relax once in a while. For Megan who stood with me during this incredible journey and listened to and comforted me through sleepless nights. Her presence in my life has been a great source of strength.
Thank you to all the Project Veritas staff for your extraordinary efforts every day. To the best media team imaginable: Stephen Gordon, Nick Evangelista, and Marco Bruno. To Joe Halderman, Project Veritas’s executive producer, who helped build out a dynamic production department and produce world class investigations.
Thanks to all of our attorneys.
This includes Ben Barr and Steve Klein on the constitutional litigation front, who protect us against frivolous lawsuits. They are not just fighting for Veritas. They are fighting for the First Amendment rights of all Americans to express themselves freely in the face of resistance from the government and well-funded opponents. Thanks too to Mark Smith and Greg Zimmer, our General Counsel, Jason Torchinsky on IRS and FEC compliance, Paul Calli and Michael Madigan on criminal defense, and Leonard Leo for his excellent guidance in areas related to lawyers and the law.
Although I cannot name them all here, I owe a major thank you to our undercover journalists–Allison Maas for helping change the course of human history through her steadfast work inside Bob Creamer’s office, Laura for getting the story at all costs, and Christian Hartsock for the irreplaceable loyalty and friendship he has given me for the last nine years. Thanks to Dan Sandini for caring so deeply about fighting alongside me since the beginning in Oregon.
A big thanks to Russell Verney, executive director of Project Veritas, for building out Project Veritas into both c3 and c4 nonprofit corporations, chief operations officer Will Keiper for helping take our operations to the next level, chief of staff Tony Catanese for helping build the new world-class Project Veritas headquarters, and office manager Jen Kiyak for years of loyalty and dedication helping run the office smoothly.
Thanks as well to Adam Guillette and Austin i.e., “MMM” and Brandon Patterson for your nights on the road and on airplanes meeting with our thousands of small donors, allowing us to be completely independent. Thanks to those supporters contributing a hundred dollars at a time, allowing us to remain truly independent. Thanks to Luke “Murddakh” Escarpeta for always being a good sport and Gio Lopez for always getting me where I need to go. To Fredy Mfuko for your hard work when it was just me and you in a production room. To Spencer Meads, thanks for your continued loyalty and recruitment efforts.
Thanks so much to my Board of Directors and advisors, including Matt Tyrmand, who has become one of my best friends talking through items for hours late at night; George Skakel, Colin Sharkey, Dr. Rick Richards, Paul Martino, Eric O’Keefe, Dr. Bob Shillman, Jim Young, and Larry Keith—for your continued advice and counsel on running a professional organization.
I’d like to thank present and past members of the Trump White House, including Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway and Dan Scavino Jr., as well as others for all the work they do. I’d like to personally thank President Donald Trump, as well as his sons Don Jr. and Eric Trump for their help supporting my stories and bringing them to the national spotlight. I’d also like to thank Sebastian Gorka for his kind words about me during the election.
I’d also like to thank the people who helped with the book itself: Alex Hoyt, who reminded me to write a second book, and to the whole staff of St. Martin’s Press. Special thanks to Adam Bellow for his guidance helping me craft it. A big thank you to Tracey Guest, Joe Rinaldi, Sarah Bonamino, Paul Hochman, Laura Clark, Kevin Reilly, and Alan Bradshaw for all their work.
A very special thank you to my long-time friend Jack Cashill for all of your advice and ideas throughout the process of writing this book.
As always, Andrew Breitbart—who taught me to walk toward the fire, who taught that narrative is controlled by the media and “the media is everything,” and all of the folks at Breitbart.com, including Steve Bannon, Alex Marlow, Joel Pollak, Matt Boyle, and Larry Solov.
For all of those who have helped me and supported my stories over the years, in no particular order, thank you so much:
Sean Hannity and Lynda McLaughlin, for taking the risk to run our “Rigging the Election” stories before any other TV network bit on them. Sean has become a true friend and a believer in Project Veritas. Thank you for telling me nearly a decade ago not to read online comments.
Rush Limbaugh and James “Bo Snerdly” Golden, for believing in the work we do. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The original modern muckraker Matt Drudge, who throws lighter fluid on our stories.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks, who helped expose the rotten political complex during the 2016 election.
Tucker Carlson and Vince Coglianese, for being true allies at The Daily Caller.
Michael Savage, for having me on his show regularly and speaking truth directly to the people always.
Gavin McInnes, for your friendship, your continued support, and your ability to make me laugh.
Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, for unapologetically punching through the media.
Michelle Malkin and Nick Short, for your great investigative work and integrity.
Jim Hoft and Lucian Wintrich, for playing the media.
Stefan Molyneux, for the fantastic conversations we have on your show.
Andrew Klavan, for your astute reading of the current political climate.
Tomi Lahren, for your help in gaining coverage when we broke our stories in October 2016.
Geraldo Rivera, for the example you set in investigative journalism.
J. Christian Adams, Hans Von Sponovsky and the Heritage Foundation for your support in the fight to expose voter fraud.
Liz Wheeler, OANN, and Charles Herring and Robert Herring, who took a chance on us when they aired an hour-long documentary series about Project Veritas investigating the New York Times.
Valerie Richardson and the Washington Times for covering us fairly in print.
Sheriff Arvin West, who was our guide near the Rio Grande River and spoke to the failures at the border that our Osama-border video illustrated.
Congressman Steven King for grilling elected officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, after we received their voting ballots without proving our identity.
Congressman Pete Sessions, for holding field hearings on our Obamacare videos.
James Rosen, for his fair coverage on Bob Creamer and Democracy Partners.
Pat Caddell, for having the courage to bring our story up on television before anyone else.
Roger Stone, for beating the drum always, and loudly.
Mike Cernovich, for being a pulse in the alternative news media, and for your great citizen journalism reporting from the 2016 Republican and Democrat National Conventions.
The entire Reddit Army from “The_Donald” subreddit, for connecting the dots in the Democracy Partners story.
Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, for their excellent work in challenging news narratives.
Jordan Peterson, for being a beacon in the fight for truth against the postmodern deconstructionists, for providing the intellectual foundation for what we do.
To Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell, for his statement at the RNC convention that “Your war is here.” Marcus inspired me to write a first book and his words inspire us at Project Veritas daily.
To my many inspirations, including the legendary investigative reporters of the ‘70s at The Chicago Sun Times and The Chicago Tribune, Clarence Jones, Tom Wolfe, Nellie Bly, Upton Sinclair, and Mike Wallace, we at Veritas thank you deeply. Your example is a constant inspiration and guide for what we hope will be a renaissance of what you did.
Specifically, Pam Zekman, Zay Smith, William Crawford, and Robert Unger of The Chicago Sun Times for their legendary undercover reporting that became an inspiration and a teaching exercise for our undercover journalists.
To G. K. Chesterton and F. A. Hayek, the sources of my worldview, who have helped guide my judgment and helped sustain my integrity in the fight for truth.
To Saul Alinsky, his son Dave, and Ralph Benko of the Alinsky Institute. Rules for Radicals is profoundly misunderstood. Tactics means doing what you can with what you have and making the enemy live up to its own book of rules. The Alinsky framework showed me how to punch up and win.
To Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose writings helped me understand human nature under a corrupt regime and who showed me tha
t the line between good and evil runs “right through every human heart.”
To David Daleiden, who became one of my heroes for his patient, years-long undercover project into Planned Parenthood in 2015, and who boldly faced the fire.
To certain patriotic members of the intelligence community—the “quiet professionals” whose names I cannot share, who gave their time and expertise in the service of building the skill-sets of our undercover journalist recruits.
And finally, to the salt of the earth, the citizenry, the people forgotten by the mainstream media, you hold our shared destiny in your hands. We are just getting started. We will never give up.
Notes
Please note that some of the links referenced in this work may no longer be active.
Meeting Citizen Trump
1.Joel Pollak, “The Vetting—Exclusive—Obama’s Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: ‘Born in Kenya and Raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,’ ” Breitbart News, May 17, 2012, http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2012/05/17/the-vetting-barack-obama-literary-agent-1991-born-in-kenya-raised-indonesia-hawaii/.
2.Madeleine Morgenstern, “Literary Agent Responds to ‘Born in Kenya’ Obama Bio: ‘Nothing More Than a Fact Checking Error,’ ” The Blaze, May 17, 2012, http://www.theblaze.com/news/2012/05/17/obama-literary-agent-responds-to-born-in-kenya-bio-nothing-more-than-a-fact-checking-error/.
3.Emily Stewart, “Donald Trump Rode $5 Billion in Free Media to the White House,” The Street, November 20, 2016, https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump-rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house.html.
4.Victor Davis Hanson, “The Anti-Trump Bourbons: Learning and Forgetting Nothing in Time for 2020,” American Greatness, August 14, 2017, https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/14/anti-trump-bourbons-learning-forgetting-nothing-time-2020/.
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