Author: LaNdo <[email protected]>     Reply to Message
Date: 10/19/2016 3:20:27 PM
Subject: Creedo & Other Trump Nut Huggers

I'm seeing a TON of these James O'Keefe journalistic atomic bombs that he thinks is going to blow up the DNC. His twitter feed claims that he is shocked at how little coverage they are getting. Well, there is a reason. He is a complete hack and has no journalistic credibility. Hillary has done enough already to show that she is shady as fuck and won't be a great president (not as bad as Trump still). So why are people posting these nonsense articles from this dude?

Here is who we're looking at




O’Keefe’s “Voter Fraud” Video Showed “Dead” Voter Later Found To Be Very Much Alive, “Non-Citizens” Who Were Actually Citizens. A May 2012 video O’Keefe claimed showed voter fraud in North Carolina, including “ballots being offered out in the name of the dead” and “non-citizens voting," was found to have edited out some important facts -- the “dead” voter from the video was not actually dead, and the “non-citizen” in the video had become a U.S. citizen decades earlier. Upon viewing the raw footage from the “voter fraud” video, Media Matters found that O’Keefe had edited out an important exchange in which the undercover operative clarified he was actually seeking the ballot of the deceased man’s living son, who was registered to vote at the same address and shared his late father’s name. ThinkProgress similarly debunked O’Keefe’s claims of “non-citizens” voting in the video, noting that “a simple Nexis search” of one man’s name showed that he and his wife were naturalized citizens, and that a second man, who was reportedly harassed with anonymous phone calls about his citizenship prior to the video, had become a naturalized citizen the previous year. ThinkProgress concluded that “the one instance in the video where O’Keefe purports to show that a non-citizen had actually voted, in fact shows that a citizen voted.” [ThinkProgress, 5/15/12, 5/16/12; Media Matters, 5/16/12]

Yet Another “Voter Fraud” Video Failed To Show Any Actual Voter Fraud; It “Just Shows How Limited O’Keefe’s Talents Are.” Over the course of several months in 2012, Project Veritas released videos O’Keefe claimed proved “widespread voter fraud” in several states and the District of Columbia. As several media outlets quickly pointed out in response to one of the videos in which an undercover actor appears to obtain a ballot posing as former Attorney General Eric Holder, the heavily edited videos do not, in fact, show any instances of voter fraud or voting at all. Instead, the videos showed actors almost committing a crime by attempting to falsely claim ballots, and illustrated how difficult it would be to commit actual voter fraud. As politics writer Alex Koppelman explained in The New Yorker (emphasis added):

Project Veritas Released Heavily Edited Footage Of Florida Democratic Party Staffers Who They Claim Are “Clinton Staffers,” Compared Their Comments To Trump’s Sexual Assault Video. Project Veritas released a video purporting to show "the 'misogynistic' nature of the Hillary Clinton campaign and its organizers, who joke about sexually harassing women and committing voter fraud on the campaign." The six-and-a-half-minute video features heavily edited undercover footage of two field organizers with the Florida Democratic Party -- not the Clinton presidential campaign -- making out-of-context statements about "acceptable conduct" on "this campaign" and about "the ballots." The only context provided to viewers about the discussions is provided by Project Veritas text, not by video. O’Keefe repeatedly compares the out-of-context footage of low-level field staffers to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 2005 hot mic comments describing sexual assault. All three staffers shown by name in the video identify themselves on their LinkedIn accounts as field organizers for the Florida Democratic Party, not the Clinton campaign. A search of the Federal Election Commission database returned no results indicating any of the three staffers have been paid directly by the Clinton campaign in 2015 or 2016. [ProjectVeritas.com, accessed 10/12/16; LinkedIn, accessed 10/12/16, 10/12/16, 10/12/16; Federal Election Commission, accessed 10/12/16]

O’Keefe Accidentally Revealed Plans To Infiltrate Philanthropist’s Organization On Targeted Employee’s Voicemail. In March, O’Keefe accidentally detailed plans to send an “undercover” operative to secretly infiltrate the liberal philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in a voicemail message for an Open Society employee. After calling the employee and posing as a “Hungarian-American who represents a, uh, foundation,” O’Keefe held “a meeting about how to perpetrate an elaborate sting on Soros,” unaware that his phone was still connected to the employee’s voicemail. Investigative journalist Jane Mayer detailed in The New Yorker that O’Keefe also inadvertently recorded himself narrating his attempts to access the employee’s LinkedIn page before realizing the individual would receive a notification he had viewed her profile. O’Keefe later acknowledged the botched attempt, saying, “some of us just forget to hang up the phone.” [Media Matters, 5/20/16]

O’Keefe And Associates Trolled College Campuses Dressed As The Constitution, “Didn’t Make Much Of A Splash.” In the fall of 2015, Project Veritas released a video purporting to show officials at several colleges and universities “literally shredding” a copy of the Constitution in response to an undercover actor posing as a student upset by the document. The video also featured footage of O’Keefe, dressed in a Constitution costume with a tricorn hat and gloves, attempting to engage with students walking through the campuses as he asked female students for their phone numbers. In response, officials from several of the schools criticized O’Keefe’s attempts at “shoddy journalism,” and noted that the administrators featured in the videos were attempting to do their jobs by assisting a student who appeared to be experiencing a mental health crisis. Media writer and Vassar College professor Hua Hsu described O’Keefe’s stunt on his own campus, and its lackluster results, for The New Yorker:

Reporter Asked, “Is This A Joke?” As O’Keefe Targeted Clinton Campaign For Selling T-Shirts. In a September sting operation, O’Keefe baselessly accused Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign of money laundering after releasing a video in which an undercover operative with Project Veritas purchased a campaign T-shirt on behalf of a Canadian attending a campaign event. The money laundering accusation was widely ridiculed by political reporters, with one journalist reportedly asking O’Keefe at a press conference promoting the video, “Is this a joke?” O’Keefe later reportedly admitted that his group likely broke the law by facilitating the $30 to $40 purchase. [Media Matters, 9/1/15; Talking Points Memo, 9/1/15]

After Osama Bin Laden Border Crossing Stunt, Even Fox News Suggested O’Keefe “Give It A Rest.” In August 2014, O’Keefe released a video in which he purportedly crossed the Rio Grande River while wearing an Osama Bin Laden costume, a stunt meant to suggest that terrorists could easily enter the U.S. at the Mexican border. Gawker immediately debunked the video in a post titled, “James O’Keefe Is Getting Desperate as Hell, Part MCMXVII,” pointing to evidence O’Keefe grossly misrepresented the area he repeatedly crossed in his video. Even Fox News host Eric Bolling couldn’t defend O’Keefe’s antics, saying the video was “not helpful,” and that O’Keefe ought to “give it a rest.” [Media Matters, 8/11/14; Gawker, 8/11/14]

O’Keefe’s Attempt At A Bombshell Hollywood Fracking Video Ended With A Target Using His Own Secret Recording To Expose O’Keefe. In May 2014, O’Keefe released a video he said exposed “the darker side of how a lot of the feel-good environmentalist propaganda gets funded by international interests who jeopardize national security.” In the video, a Project Veritas actor posed as “Muhammed,” an oil tycoon from the Middle East who attempted to fund a documentary project on the harms of fracking. O’Keefe suggested that, based on an instance in which two filmmakers appeared to accept the funding, his tactics had “exposed the truth about the dark funding behind Hollywood’s anti-fracking messaging machine.” O’Keefe even “debuted” the edited video at “a ‘premiere’ in Cannes, France.” Media Matters found that O’Keefe’s claims were refuted by unedited footage O’Keefe himself released, and one target of Project Veritas, film director Josh Fox, revealed his own secret recordings of their interactions that “caught” O’Keefe “in total deception,“ "willfully portray[ing] it in the wrong light” with heavy editing. The director shared his own revealing recordings on MSNBC’s All In, where host Chris Hayes introduced the segment on “disgraced right-wing operative professional troll” O’Keefe:

O’Keefe’s Battleground Texas Video Declared “Little More Than A Canard And Political Disinformation” By State Investigation. In February 2014, Project Veritas released a video purporting to show employees of the progressive voter registration group Battleground Texas using “potentially illegal methods to change elections.” Outraged Republican state officials pushed for an investigation into the video, ultimately resulting in two Texas special prosecutors disparaging O’Keefe’s tactics and the video itself. The special prosecutors concluded their investigation by asking that complaints against Battleground Texas be dismissed, calling the Veritas video “little more than a canard and political disinformation.” [Media Matters, 4/7/14]

O’Keefe “Confronted” Lawmaker About Nonexistent Language In “Race Hustler” Voting Rights Legislation. In a March 2014 video, O’Keefe bizarrely attempted to “ambush” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) about his bipartisan bill designed to reaffirm civil rights protections in the Voting Rights Act. After dancing to a New Order song while wearing camouflage, O’Keefe attempted to confront Sensenbrenner at several Wisconsin town hall meetings for so-called “racialist language” in his bill that “excludes whites,” which Sensenbrenner correctly noted the bill does not, in fact, do. Media reporter Dave Weigel described the bizarre video’s “strange” focus at Slate:

O’Keefe Forced To Pay $100,000 And Publicly Apologize In Settlement Related To Sham 2010 ACORN Exposé. In March 2013, O’Keefe and conservative activist Hannah Giles settled a 2010 lawsuit after one of the videos they released in a series on the now-defunct group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which fraudulently portrayed the role of a former ACORN employee, resulted in the employee’s termination. In the video, the employee was shown appearing to aid undercover actors in criminal activity, but an analysis of the heavily edited video revealed the employee had actually called the police immediately following the secretly recorded interaction. Pursuant to the court-approved deal, O’Keefe and Giles had to pay the employee a collective $150,000, and O’Keefe issued a public apology claiming he was unaware the employee had notified authorities. [Media Matters, 3/7/13]

O’Keefe’s New York Union Boss “Gotcha” Attempt Just Showed Local Officials Trying To Be “Courteous” In An Absurd, O’Keefe-Manufactured Situation. In July 2012, Project Veritas released a video it claimed showed elected officials and union leaders in New York state helping undercover actors secure funding for a business “that literally does nothing but dig holes and then put the dirt back.” The raw footage of the video revealed that the officials featured in the video did not express support for the fake company or offer to help the actors find funding at all, but rather politely questioned the actors posing as their constituents about their clearly made-up operation. The officials later clarified they had assumed at the time that the discussion “must be a scam” but had “tried to be courteous.” [Media Matters, 7/18/12]

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