"During that time, Project Veritas has been divided between a group of O’Keefe loyalists and a large group of dissenters on the staff and board who chafed at the founder’s erratic management style, spending, and penchant for costly confrontation with ideological adversaries and his own employees. O’Keefe was placed on paid leave in early February after what people close to the organization described as a blowup in which he summarily fired a pair of top employees, including the group’s chief financial officer...."
... O’Keefe was apparently hiking in Santa Monica with the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who posted a scenic tweet as proof of life.... Sources familiar with the organization’s internal workings said... that a battle was raging behind the veneer of civility.
One source said that an internal messaging system used by employees had turned into “an all-out brawl” and a “civil war,” as O’Keefe’s partisans attacked a faction of employees who had signed a highly detailed letter of complaint that described their boss as a “power drunk tyrant.”
In his speech to his staff on Monday, O’Keefe said he wrote a letter to all the members of the board, saying that if they did not resign en masse, he would be “forced to walk away.”...
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57 comments:
And where ever he goes the true Project Veritas will go.
The mistake he made was allowing progressive shitheads to be any part of the organization. They are incompatible with decent human activity and seek to force everyone around them to bow to their will.
Progressives have no principles and don't believe in anything except forcing you to do things.
They will chant no blood for oil antiwar one day and call you a Putin puppet for not supporting war the next day.
The only thing they care about is forcing people to do things.
Seems a miscalculation by the staff. He’s the show…
1. Why did that small organization ever need a board of directors?
2. Why did O'Keefe hire people who hated him?
3. Why did the board not realize they were killing the org by dumping him, or was that their plan all along?
Seems like failure all around.
Watch Project Veritas subscribership (ID: project_veritas) collapse in real time on Twitter:
https://socialblade.com/twitter/user/project_veritas
PV is dead as we knew it. I don't expect it to last without O'Keefe. Look for him to reinvent himself and draw the bulk of PV's donation base to wherever he goes. Even if he's a jerk and a tyrant, he has a personal following.
I also want to point out that if you want real information on what is going in right now in Project Veritas you will go anywhere but New Yorker Magazine.
The New York media is so insular and pathetic. The New York Post tries to make it respectable but in as ridiculous a way as possible.
Is there a covenant not to compete? Wondering if he can start The O’Keefe Project tomorrow.
Goodness, I had missed all this turmoil entirely. I would've thought there would be crowing from the start - any sign of weakness at all.
Maybe there was. We've been busy.
I hope the group will continue to beard the lion in its den.
Reminds me of Moses: the leader who can’t go to the reward with his followers. Or, Al Kooper. Blood Sweat and Tears fired him and he was the one who started the band.
"and penchant for costly confrontation with ideological adversaries"
That was the entire mission of Project Veritas, no? O'Keefe was able to show the world the evil that hides behind liberal curtains. He exposed their lies, hypocrisy, arrogance, and corruption. The dude is a truth telling hero.
What was he supposed to do? Say pretty please...?
Interesting how the last confrontation was the biggest. Proving that Pfizer is manipulating viruses in order to market new "vaccines" to "protect" us all. I'm sure there was outside pressure put on the Veritas board.
I liked Pfizer much better when they were admired for making boner pills.
It's not unusual when an organization goes from scrappy start-up to established organization, it has to jettison many of the early members as their type of zeal is no longer appropriate.
Some companies thrive from there, others crash and burn.
a large group of dissenters on the staff and board who chafed at the founder’s erratic management style, spending, and penchant for costly confrontation with ideological adversaries and his own employees.
I guess words like "alleged" are no longer important in journalism if the claims are about conservatives. And if the allegations involve Democrats the preferred term is "false."
He embarrassed Pfizer.
I am assuming that this is a kneecapping by wealthy DNC donors and their operatives, like they did to the now irrelevant Drudge Report, until proven otherwise. The last place I would expect to get the truth on this is the MSM.
I don’t know what was happening, but O’Keefe made Project Veritas, not the other way around. I’m not the biggest fan of O’Keefe, but I know Project Veritas is meaningless without him, yet O’Keefe is still who he was.
The sound of champagne being uncorked in Prog haunts is deafening.
"And if the allegations involve Democrats the preferred term is 'false.'"
No, it's "baseless."
Blogger JZ said...
Or, Al Kooper. Blood Sweat and Tears fired him and he was the one who started the band.
Tha's a pretty obscure reference, JZ.
I thought I was the only one who remembers Al Kooper and the real BST. Glad to see someone else does too.
Child is Father to the Man was a great album. As were the blues project, Super Session and all his other albums, which I still have. Although no way to play them.
There is a pretty interesting autobiography by Kooper via the portal.
John Henry
He was the star of the show and entitled to his diva moments. I would guess that his contentious personality that works so well in confrontations with THEM is also a hindrance in his negotiations with US....I admire him, but he might not be that much fun to work with. There's an argument to be made for both sides.
Clay felker is screaming in the ether,
O’Keefe needed a board, needed progressives because of all the lawfare milling around him.
Warriors aren’t always amiable people. Especially not culture warriors.
That New York Magazine piece had all the hallmarks of left-wing disinformation.
First, if he doesn't have the rights to the name, then he has bad lawyers.
Second, they need him far more than he needs them.
I couldn't name another person in the organization, could you?
Like Hillary's Clinton Initiative cash drying up after she lost the presidential election, their contributions will disappear...
As someone mentioned on Twitter, it's suits vs talent...
Hollowing out an institution from the inside, using a board of stealth executives that claim to be conservatives but may be, not so much. And now, we're to believe it was all plebian, all about O'Keefe, and absolutely nothing to do with, say, timing and upcoming elections and organization's effectiveness. Where does this tactic come from, one wonders? Who might it be?
Let's see if we can think of a lie the New York Magazine wouldn't publish....................................................................................................... Gosh, that's hard!
I await his new organization. Project Veritas is dead.
Felker is the new york magazine founder and paramour that sally quinn hexed to death
This man was NEVER a hero, more of a gotcha guy. Adios, no one will miss your brand of "journalism" which isn't journalism at all.
Vicki from Pasadena
James O'Keefe is Project Veritas, so with his departure, Project Veritas the organization is kaput until James O'Keefe reforms it under another name, like Project Verdad.
I predict Project Veritas staggers on for a while, becoming its leftwing version. Robert Conquest and David Burge come to mind here very powerfully.
I guess he can join forces with Larry Klayman.
Late last night Catturd (@catturd2) reported that the Project Veritas Twitter feed was losing 1,000 followers a minute, and had already lost 260,000 since the announcement. That's about 20%, I think.
Planned Parenthood, strike one.
Non-sterilizing experimental treatments, with excess adverse events in the past, present, and unknown forward-looking damage, strike two.
The multi-trillion dollar Medical Industrial Complex (MIC), you're out.
I wonder what O'Keefe will call his new project? Project Veritas will be in bankruptcy court.
"The sound of champagne being uncorked in Prog haunts is deafening."
“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
Why did the board not realize they were killing the org by dumping him or was that their plan all along?
It was their plan all along. And all of them knew VP would become a shell 501c3 as a result, with a name and charter, but few assets and no output. After a "decent" interval those board members will resign, one by one, and disappear into very comfortable obscurity as officers in various bullshit charities operated as tax havens for Pfizer.
O'Keefe can yet succeed. The donors aren't fooled. The money stream is already drying up. In a few weeks, two months at the outside, VP's top producers and undercover operatives will have fallen away, but many will join O'Keefe's new project. Unfortunately, the new organization will probably be another chartered nonprofit liable to the same adversarial board control that has proven to be eminently corruptable by the most powerful interests. VP was imagined as an uncorrupted version of 60 Mintues, the originator of ambush video journalism. However, trying to emulate the CBS News Division, from birth a red ink subsidy pig created to court network viewer loyalty rather than make money directly, was bound to be a challenging hurdle if financed as a nonprofit. O'Keefe needs a sugar daddy, a source of cash without the 501c3 suicide pact.
Verum contra tyrannidem!
Yancey, thank you, I could not quite remember those two names. So true.
There is no PJ without O’Keefe. So did those employees not realize they we’re putting themselves out of job? Are they that stupid or are they actual enemy combatants out of uniform?
Even if [O'Keefe is] a jerk and a tyrant, he has a personal following.
Jerk and tyrant was an accurate description of Steven Jobs, particularly when he turned Apple into a gladiatorial area where Macintosh developers and engineers fought their Apple II colleagues with blunt instruments. Internal chaos and completion from Windows and the clones led John Scully to sack jerk and tyrant Jobs, who nevertheless enjoyed enough loyalty to take a few dozen key developers and engineers with him to NeXT. Minus Jobs, Scully helmed S.S. Apple onto one reef after another until he got the chop as well. Scully's feckless replacement, Micael Spindler, almost grounded Apple for good, but for Jobs riding to the rescue with a genuine multitasking OS.
The O'Keefe affair may resolve itself in a similar manner, though to be fair, the Jobs affair was entirely about profitability, whereas the sacking of James O'Keefe is about the wielders of untouchable power feeling a little heat and not liking it one little bit.
Vicki from Baal Hammon resents the infant immolation videos. That's private information and nunya bidness.
Re: the other Enigma questions...
1. Why did that small organization ever need a board of directors?
2. Why did O'Keefe hire people who hated him?
1. VP is a tax-exempt entity.
2. Tax exemption is anathema to government and always has been regardless of clique in power. Consequently, the governing structure of organizations chartered as tax-exempt encourages an adversarial relationship between the directorship and the spenders on the theory that an entity unwilling to share its lifeblood with the state must be fundamentally crooked and watched closely as such. To an extent, this is true of any investor-financed entity, but in the case of a stock company, the directors are shareholders protecting their investments. However, the directorship of a non-profit is protecting something more ill-defined than monetary self-interest.
All this started with a sudden firing of two, including the CFO? Well, that signals one side or the other are likely in the cookie jar so outside financial audit is in order. Even if the board wins, did they stop spending or did they stop O'Keefe from stopping the board/CFO's plundering?
Outside audit
Blogger victoria said...
This man was NEVER a hero, more of a gotcha guy. Adios, no one will miss your brand of "journalism" which isn't journalism at all.
Vicki is right there following the party line.
Quaestor, I think you nailed it. O'Keefe put some money people on the Board and they torpedoed the company. Somebody else pointed out a week or two ago that the Board was not part of the program but did not mention the Pfizer connection.
This man was NEVER a hero, more of a gotcha guy.
But I’ll bet Icky Vicki, the original Little Old Lady from Pasadena, just ADORED “gotcha journalism” when it was practiced by Mike Wallace and Morley Safer and Dan Rather were honing their gotcha skills on “60 Minutes.”
Pelosi calls an action such as this against someone the "wrap up smear". The left has perfected the process and she is on video explaining how it works. They work to destroy a conservative that has a following, make false accusations, and demand the GOPe condemn the person without knowing if the accusations are based upon any truths. Any protestations of innocence by the accused is seen as evidence of guilt. Once they have destroyed the person's credibility, income, and reputation, they all celebrate their own high morals.
M writes, "There is no PJ without O’Keefe."
Funny, I always thought that was O'Rourke.
Live and learn.
Al Kooper. Blood Sweat and Tears fired him and he was the one who started the band.
Simpsons, Mayor Quimby: "Thank you Blood and Tears. Sorry to hear about Sweat."
Yancy Ward writes, "I predict Project Veritas staggers on for a while, becoming its leftwing version."
I doubt this outcome. Much more powerful and well-financed organizations (NYT, WaPo, LAT, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ad nauseam) have been beavering away in that niche since Trump took that escalator ride if not long before, looking and searching and laying snares and traps garnering nothing, hence the Russia-Russia-Russia thing. The usual suspects had to resort to fraud because actual journalism yielded little benefit to the Clintons and other fascists. With such long-established competition, there's no room for a leftwing Project Veritas to operate within.
'This man was NEVER a hero, more of a gotcha guy. Adios, no one will miss your brand of "journalism" which isn't journalism at all.'
Says the person who worships "60 Minutes."
1. If you want to be able to attract donations, and you want those donations to be tax-deductible, you must have the correct non-profit corporate structure, which includes multiple outside directors.
2. You end up with a board more attuned to protecting the corp than fulfilling the original mission.
3. JO should have read Vox Day's book on corporate convergence by the left before undertaking to corporatize.
Blogger Quaestor said...
M writes, "There is no PJ without O’Keefe."
Funny, I always thought that was O'Rourke.
Quaestor, I think M meant there’s no PV without O’Keefe and M is right about that.
A solution offered not entirely in jest:
The Veritas Project, Part Deux™ should be founded as a religion, with James O'Keefe as His Reverand Holiness Jimmy I, supreme pontiff. Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free. That's the Gospel of St. John, chapter 8, verse 32 -- genuine scripture held as revealed and sacred by billions. Therefore, an uncorrupted successor to Project Veritas dedicated to let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may truth-to-power-speaking is fundamentally more Christain than speaking in tongues and plausibly religious, certainly more so than the current United Methodist Church. It's 1521 all over again! (Care to join me in a worm soufflé, brethren?)
As a church O'Keefe's new project would come firmly under the Establishment clause, none of that 501c3 bullshit required. Of course, that also means donors can't deduct their donations, at least in this life. But that fact hasn't made the preacher trade any less attractive to the admirers of exotic cars. My Guardian Angel says money won't be a problem. (But he never says that about my money!)
Project Veritas-style journalism aimed at the right is implausible. It's like trying to live on a diet of hummingbird pie, there's not enough meat to keep you going.
Eva Marie writes, "I think M meant there’s no PV without O’Keefe and M is right about that."
Well, shut my mouth and stuff me with cornpone.
Quaestor,
You absolutely do have to have a board for a non-profit, but there's no requirement as to any certain degree of adversariality.
Pretty sure here in WA you can incorporate in nonprofit with hand-picked board members to start with, and those members can in turn select their successors, world without end. So as someone else mentioned, all you really need is to maintain a SJWAL/Corporate Cancer level of paranoia, and you can last for quite a while.
Entrepreneurs almost invariably turn out to be shitty managers but if you squint I'm sure this episode is capable of confirming everyone's political priors.
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