Why Does Anyone Still Work For James O’Keefe?

Conservative fantasy filmmaker James O’Keefe is a nightmare boss — just ask Hannah Giles, Kenneth “Simon Templar” Larrey, Izzy Santa, Nadia Naffe, or Daniel Francisco. As reported by the New York Post, the latest addition to the growing ranks of disgruntled former Project Veritas employees is staffer Richard Valdez, who was fired in January after he refused to strong-arm an “undercover operative” into acts of incitement.

Valdes said Veritas assigned a Muslim undercover agent pretending to be anti-cop to attend protest meetings and utter the following statement: “Sometimes, I wish I could just kill some of these cops. Don’t you just wish we could have one of the cops right here in the middle of our group?”

But the undercover agent refused, according to Valdes.

“I will not say words that will jeopardize my entity, especially when they involve an illegal act of ‘murdering police,’ ” the agent wrote in a Jan. 9 e-mail to Valdes and cc’d to O’Keefe.

You can almost set your watch by O’Keefe, as he never goes a complete calendar year without another staff fiasco. Yet in spite of O’Keefe’s rich history of fabrication and smears, Joanna Rothkopf of Salon.com isn’t getting excited yet:

It is important to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism about these reports as the New York Post is the snot rag of the media landscape, and these claims have not been confirmed by another outlet as of the writing of this article. Additionally, the script that the operative was instructed to read feels like it was written by an alien attempting to blend in with Earth teens.

While granting that the Post is exactly the sort of “snot rag” that usually publishes O’Keefe’s work without much critical examination, I must counter that “an alien attempting to blend in with Earth teens” pretty much describes every undercover sting script O’Keefe has ever written. As I’ve pointed out before, all of O’Keefe’s victims have reported feeling that something was ‘off’ or confusing about the words he says.

It’s almost like O’Keefe is a spoiled son of privilege who doesn’t know anything about the lives of normal people, has surrounded himself with sycophants, and consequently has trouble relating to everyday human beings who don’t come from wealthy families. Go figure!

Why does anyone still work for James O’Keefe III? Frankly, I think it’s all the money that wealthy right wing donors supply his 501(c)(3) nonprofit, allowing him to offer paid work to idealistic young conservative activists who see a chance to build their movement resumes. So long as there are such people, O’Keefe will never suffer a lack of volunteers for his abuse, and stories of his unethical management style will emerge on a regular basis.