O'Keefeless Project Veritas tries to roll out some hard-hitting undercover video, but it's just a run-of-the-mill jackass professor bad-mouthing conservative students.

Link. 

Concentrate on the comments. To quote a few: Where’s James o’keefe?/You can try all you want, but you’re nothing without @JamesOKeefeIII/Neat no James. Don't care. I'll wait for James and his new project. Vertias [sic] is compromised and cannot be trusted/Don't matter if you're trying to continue the work if you're corrupt. Being [sic] back @JamesOKeefeIII resign and then join @ProjectLincoln/Nothing new here… low hanging fruit. What happened with the Pfizer story? Or are you not supposed to talk about it anymore?

That video is pointless — humiliating a guy who seems to think he's impressing a date by telling her he's in "control" in the classroom and can embarrass students who don't know what he knows about climate change. 

"Whatever the truth of the messy circumstances, [James] O’Keefe has left [Project Veritas] after a two-week period of turmoil."

"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...."

New York Magazine reports.

Project Veritas is doing some high-tech trolling of Pfizer.

We rented an LED truck and parked it outside of @pfizer world headquarters in Manhattan today⁰⁰Stay tuned… pic.twitter.com/P9waV9vx86

— Project Veritas (@Project_Veritas) January 31, 2023

"So why the raids? Since when does the FBI [conduct] raids over missing diaries?"

Asks Jonathan Turley in "FBI Raids Project Veritas Writers . . . Over A Missing Biden Diary?" 

Project Veritas decided not to run the story because it could not verify that the diary belonged to [Ashley] Biden... Instead, it alerted the police, according to [James] O’Keefe: “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.” ...

What is the alleged federal crime (and what is the precedent for a major federal investigation over such an alleged theft)? What precautions were taken by the Biden Administration in light of the claimed media status of the targeted individuals? Why was there a delay in this action being taken if the alleged theft occurred a year ago? Has this matter been under investigation for a year and did the White House request the intervention of the FBI?

"People Tied to Project Veritas Scrutinized in Theft of Diary From Biden’s Daughter/The F.B.I. carried out search warrants in New York as part of a Justice Department investigation into how pages from Ashley Biden’s journal came to be published by a right wing website."

The NYT reports. 

This causes National File — the place that published the entire diary last year— to write: "BOMBSHELL: New York Times, FBI Confirm Legitimacy of Ashley Biden Diary Published by National File."

While the vast majority of the media ignored the bombshell revelations, perhaps dismissing their verifiability, The New York Times on Friday reported that the FBI had engaged in two raids on addresses as part of an investigation into how Ashley Biden’s diary was obtained.

The NYT doesn't talk about what is in the purported diary, but it refers to the diary as if it is established that they diary is really Ashley Biden's diary. And of course, if it wasn't really Ashley Biden's diary then how could the FBI have gotten the search warrant?

You can still read that diary and find links to it at that second link, but I don't know if I'd recommend doing that. It's a personal diary. I think the worst thing about Joe Biden is a statement of a memory of taking a shower with him that was "probably not appropriate."  

Here's James O'Keefe on "FBI and Southern District of New York Raid Project Veritas Journalists’ Homes."

"ABC News suspended one of its veteran correspondents late Tuesday for unguarded remarks he made in a video by operatives of Project Veritas..."

"The choppy, poorly shot video, released Wednesday morning by Project Veritas, captured [David] Wright [saying]... 'I don’t think we’re terribly interested in voters'.... Also: 'Commercial imperative is incompatible with news.' At one point he says: 'We don’t hold him to account. We also don’t give him credit for what things he does do.' In subtitles, Project Veritas indicated that 'him' stood for President Trump. He refers to Trump at another point as 'the f-----g president.' But ABC probably was also alarmed at Wright’s criticism of ABC News, which is owned by the Disney Co. At another point, he raises another longstanding critique of ABC News — that it blends news with promotion of Disney-owned movies and TV programs. 'Like now you can’t watch "Good Morning America" without there being a Disney princess or a Marvel Avenger appearing,' he says. 'It’s all self-promotional.'... [A] voice asks the reporter if he considers himself 'a Democratic socialist,' and Wright seems to reply, 'more than that, I consider myself a socialist.'

From WaPo reports.

Here's that "choppy, poorly shot video":

"ABC News anchor Amy Robach was caught on camera slamming her own network for allegedly sitting on the Jeffrey Epstein story three years ago...."

"Robach says she’d spoken to Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges Epstein used her as a sex slave and trafficked her to his powerful friends, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. 'I’ve had this interview with Virginia Roberts .. we would not put it on the air,' Robach says on camera. 'First of all, I was told "Who’s Jeffrey Epstein?"... Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew and threatened us a million different ways.' She went on to say the network was afraid that running the story would prevent interviews with Kate Middleton and and Prince William. 'It was unbelievable what we had. [Bill] Clinton—we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations.'"

The Daily Beast reports on the newly released video you can watch below. Amy Robach is the journalist who got Hunter Biden to cry (in that long interview last month).

BREAKING: @abcnews anchor @arobach caught on 'hot mic' in August disgustedly exposing networks decision to strategically spike bombshell investigation into Jefferey Esptein over THREE YEARS AGO.

Says what she had was "unbelievable" #EpsteinCoverup: https://t.co/HagfLpwKDn pic.twitter.com/fPvJc3JCCQ

— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 5, 2019

"[Sacha Baron] Cohen is still an undisputed genius at punking... But if 'Who Is America?' is worth any praise, then what are we to say about the techniques of Project Veritas..."

"... the conservative, undercover operation that has tried to infiltrate and expose liberal bias among news organizations and community organizers? What Cohen does is not all that different... To giggle at and delight in Cohen’s pranks is to believe that you can have it both ways: that you can be horrified at the collapse of truth and democracy, and then laugh at a guy who seeks to undermine whatever remains of trust. As watchably galling as Cohen’s techniques may be, America in 2018 doesn’t really seem like the right time or place for it."

From "Sacha Baron Cohen still knows how to punk America, but his new show erodes what little trust we have left" by Hank Stuever (WaPo).

I'm giving this my "Era of That's Not Funny" tag.

By the way, the commenters at WaPo are strongly resisting the comparison of this comedy show to the Project Veritas sting operations. The key argument is that Cohen presents his footage as a network comedy show. He just wants laughs. Project Veritas presents its footage as internet video, for the purpose of affecting real-world policy. But (I would add) there is a side effect of humor in some of the Project Veritas video, and Sacha Baron Cohen does have a political viewpoint and does intend to undermine the power of the politicians he targets.

No one — not Stuever or his commenters — mentions "The Daily Show." A few years ago, we continually heard the observation that Americans are getting their news from that comedy show. A satire was the primary source of factual information and opinion spin. The line between showbiz and journalism was blurred long ago. I mean, look at how the WaPo commenters are willing to call Project Veritas "journalism"! It used to be critiqued as not journalism at all, as if it really were more of a comedy show.

The line between seriousness and comedy — between journalism and entertainment — is just completely blurred now. The idea that it should be sharpened up... is that some kind of joke? I couldn't tell you, because the line between joking and sobriety is gone.

"That pimp and hooker thing you did, wow!" — said Trump to James O'Keefe in 2013.

Writes CNN (drawing on O'Keefe's about-to-be-released book, "American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News").

According to O'Keefe, Trump "suspected Obama had presented himself as a foreign student on application materials to ease his way into New York's Columbia University, maybe even Harvard too, and perhaps picked up a few scholarships along the way."...

"'Nobody else can get this information,'" O'Keefe quoted Trump as saying. "'Do you think you could get inside Columbia?'"

O'Keefe said he explained to Trump that the request did not fall into his "line of work".... "Trump shook my hand, encouraged me to keep up the good work, and half-whispered, 'Do Columbia.'"

ADDED: Trump — if O'Keefe's story is true — seems to have had some idea that Obama's getting into Columbia and Harvard is evidence that he claimed to have been a "foreign student." But I've served on admissions committees at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and I do not think that being "a foreign student" would be very helpful in getting into Columbia or Harvard, compared to having precisely the life story that Obama claimed in "Dreams From My Father" and relied on as he ran for President. And how, in any plausible version of the facts, could Obama have presented himself as "a foreign student"? Let's imagine that he had been born in Kenya, he'd still at most be an immigrant, not a "foreign student."

But who came up with the term "foreign student"? Trump? O'Keefe? CNN?

By the way, who says "foreign student" these days? Inside the educational institution, I only heard "international student." I've long considered that a misnomer, but it seems to have become politically incorrect long ago to say "foreign student" or to call someone a "foreigner." But we call students who come to a school from another state "out-of-state" students not "interstate" students.

I looked up "foreign" in the OED to see if I could find a reason to feel averse to that word, and I discovered that the oldest usage of the word is: "Out of doors; outside. a chamber foreign: a privy (cf. branch B.). foreign darkness = ‘outer darkness’. Obs."

1297 R. Gloucester's Chron. (1724) 310 In to a chambre forene þe gadelyng gan wende.

The word is otherizing. Later meanings include away from home (the opposite of "domestic"), excluded, not part of one's family, and "Alien in character; not related to or concerned with the matter under consideration; irrelevant, dissimilar, inappropriate":

a1642 R. Callis Reading of Statute of Sewers (1647) ii. 103 The Lord of the Copyhold is not to be taxed for the Soil of the Copyhold; for although he might come to it by forfeiture committed, yet that is a forain possibility.

There's the idea of a "foreign object," which often comes up in the context of surgery. And when the word is used to refer to what is outside of one's country, the OED tells us that in British use, it didn't ordinarily apply "to (former) colonies chiefly inhabited by English-speaking people."

Congratulations to The Washington Post for not falling for a Project Veritas sting.

"A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation."

In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.

Word that does not appear on the front-page at CNN right now: Russia.

The narrative has changed. Click to enlarge:



I do see — look closely — "Van Jones: O'Keefe video is a hoax." The video is the one where we hear Van Jones say "That Russia thing is just a big nothing-burger." But the teaser on the front page doesn't give us a clue that the video had to do with Russia, and even when you click through, there's no mention of the substance of what we hear Jones say in the video, just the assertion: "CNN's Van Jones says the ambush video of him done by notorious provocateur James O'Keefe is a hoax."

And how is the video a hoax? I think Jones is misusing the word, because he does not deny that he is the man in the video or that there's some context that would change the meaning of his statement. He indicates that he could have said other things, but not that he did actually on that occasion say more and O'Keefe had it edited out.

ADDED: I'm just noticing that among the things CNN is trying to tease us with this morning is: "Prostitutes: Senate health care bill will devastate us." Prostitutes!

ALSO: The Washington Post also has a front page that doesn't mention Russia but does — amazing! — have sex workers. Click to enlarge:



You see the sex workers story: "Everything you were afraid to ask about phone sex workers — in one class-action lawsuit."

Is there some JournoList-like back channel where they're brainstorming about how to titillate people if you can't talk about Russia and coming up with PROSTITUTES!

Part 3 of the Project Veritas attack on CNN.

This time the victim of secret filming is Jimmy Carr, who is said to be the Associate Producer for CNN’s "New Day." James O'Keefe tells us Carr is based in Brooklyn, and urges Paul Farhi — the WaPo writer who made much of the failure to say that the victim in Part 1 was based in Atlanta — to take note that he's naming the place.

In the new video, Carr purports know the opinion of everyone at CNN: "We’re all on, 90% of us are on board with just the fact that  [Donald Trump] is crazy." And:

"On the inside, we all recognize he is a clown that he is hilariously unqualified for this. He’s really bad at this and that he does not have America’s best interests. We recognize he’s just fucking crazy... He’s not actually a Republican. He just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn’t believe anything that these people believe. The man is on his third wife. I guarantee you he’s paid for abortions. He doesn’t give a shit about abortion. He doesn’t care about gay marriage."

And this is especially interesting right now, when everyone purports to be shocked that Donald Trump tweeted that Mika Brzezinski was "bleeding badly from a face-lift": Carr says that Kellyanne Conway "looks like she got hit with a shovel."

The new Project Veritas video: Van Jones saying "That Russia thing is just a big nothing-burger."

Project Veritas captures a CNN exec agreeing that the Russia narrative is "bullshit" and volunteering that it's all about ratings.

As the Project Veritas website puts it: "CNN is actively plotting a fake news campaign, aimed squarely at Trump--and Project Veritas just caught them red-handed."

It was horrible of that CNN editor to say it's the role of journalists to "aid the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

Good thing James O'Keefe smoked out that horror (spoken by Richard T. Griffiths, vice president and editorial director at CNN, when he thought he was off microphone).

It was horrible of Griffiths to mangle the great old aphorism, which is usually phrased "The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" and which was originally written — in the kind of dialect people don't find too amusing anymore — in the 1902 book "Observations by Mr. Dooley":

“Th' newspaper does ivrything f'r us. It runs th' polis foorce an' th' banks, commands th' milishy, controls th' ligislachure, baptizes th' young, marries th' foolish, comforts th' afflicted, afflicts th' comfortable, buries th' dead an' roasts thim aftherward.”

(Mr. Dooley, an Irish bartender, is the fictional creation of the newspaper humorist Finley Peter Dunne.)

How can Griffiths be a media editor and so lacking of an ear for language? What makes the saying great is the flipping of the 2 words, comfort and afflict.  In the first phrase, comfort is the verb and the noun is formed out of the word afflict. In the second phrase, afflict is the verb and the noun is formed out of the word comfort. That's some beautiful humor, full of meaning and poetry.

Then along comes this lummox Griffiths and he botches the first word, instead of beginning with comfort — the word upon which you're then supposed to cleverly end (in its variation comfortable) — he begins with aid, which never appears again in his clunky non-aphorism.

It's like saying: It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the amount of the fight in the dog.

"#CNNLeaks: Project Veritas Releases Over 100 Hours of Audio From Inside CNN."

ADDED: I put up the video before watching it. I've watched it now and I'm not seeing anything significant in the few little clips of audio presented. There's also an invitation to us to go through all the hours and hours of audio at the Project Veritas webpage.

Robby Mook's sleight of hand about the Democratic operatives who manufactured violence at Trump rallies.

On CNN's "State of the Union" this morning, Jake Tapper confronted Robby Mook (Clinton's campaign manager) about Robert Creamer and Scott Foval, the 2 Democratic operatives who "were caught on tape talking about instigating violence at a Trump rally."

TAPPER: Have you looked into whether or not Democratic operatives paid by the Democratic National Committee were actually instigating these horrific actions, these violent actions we saw at Trump rallies? That's -- I'm sure you would agree, if that's true, that's really offensive.

MOOK: Well, violence is unacceptable. These individuals no longer have a relationship with the DNC. They have never had a relationship with the Clinton campaign. And my understanding is that the events that are referenced happened, I think, in February of last year. They didn't have a contract with the DNC until June. 

That doesn't get the DNC off the hook. Why were these people hired? They did something, and then they were hired. Were they hired because they'd shown what kind of dirty tricks they were capable of?

MOOK: But, putting that all aside, this was, again, a video that was leaked out for the purpose of damaging the campaign. It's edited, so we don't know what the full context is. And there is -- there's no evidence whatsoever that we have been able to find that anyone ever did anything like this when they were working for the DNC. 

Mook sounds so guilty there. He's mad that any video exists (because it hurts his candidate), and he's also telling us not to make any inferences about anything that isn't proved by video. Again, I'm thinking: They did something bad before they were agents of the DNC, so why did the DNC hire them and what did they do?

"We talk about lots of things that we don't talk about."

Language warning (right from the beginning):



Here's the written article: "Rigging the Election – Video II: Mass Voter Fraud" (Project Veritas Action):

One of the highest-level operatives for the DNC who admits to being “no white knight” said that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years. [The now-fired Scott] Foval then goes on to explain the sinister plot and how they avoid getting caught. The undercover reporter asks why they can’t just “bus in” voters, but get them to use their own personal vehicles. Foval describes how they avoid being detected and free of criminal charges. “Would they charge each individual of voter fraud? Or are they going to go after the facilitator for conspiracy, which they could prove? It’s one thing if all these people drive up in their personal cars. If there’s a bus involved? That changes the dynamic.”

"If you're there and you're protesting and you do these actions, you will be attacked at Trump rallies. That's what we want."

"The whole point of it is that we know that Trump's people will freak the fuck out, his security team will freak out, and his supporters will lose their shit."

Said Scott Foval, who was the national field director for the Americans United for Change until he was fired for saying that on a James O’Keefe undercover video.

Aaaaah! Moss might be Maass, the apparent Republican in a possible plot against Russ Feingold.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has the story:

An apparent Republican activist tried to join Democrat Russ Feingold’s team this week in what Feingold’s campaign suspects was a plot to dig up dirt on him.

In an interview with Feingold staff on Wednesday, she initially said she wanted to work on issues affecting women’s health care and unions, but clammed up when confronted about whether she had worked for conservatives and tried to infiltrate Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Iowa last year....

The woman signed up to be a volunteer as Allison Moss on Tuesday, but was let go Wednesday after the Feingold campaign asked her if she was actually Allison Maass. Maass is a writer with Campus Reform, a project of the conservative Leadership Institute aimed at exposing liberal bias at universities....

Why change your name only just that much — Maass to Moss? Perhaps it is inherent in the nature of moss, not to change much, which is why very reactionary conservatives are called mossbacks. 

Mossback..seems to have originated in the swamps of North Carolina, where a particular class of the poor whites were said to have lived among the cypress until the moss had grown on their backs.

ADDED: A bit more information at Yahoo News, with references to Project Veritas, (the James O’Keefe operation) and the spokesman's statement: “Regarding the person you named below, Project Veritas will neither provide nor confirm the identity of any of our undercover journalists, real or imagined."

We were just talking about the ethics of undercover journalism the other day — after a Daily Beast writer did a story on gay male athletes at the Olympics. So check out that post if you are wondering how bad it is for journalists to misrepresent themselves to get a story. I don't know if the Feingold incident — if it was indeed a trick of some kind — was an effort at journalism or some kind of political spying or sabotage.

AND: The Feingold campaign ought to be careful about what it is doing to the real Allison Maass. Here's her page at Campus Reform, where you can see her picture and links to articles she's done. She's a real person: "She is a senior at the University of Minnesota studying professional journalism and graphic design and is Editor-in-Chief of the student publication The Minnesota Republic." Her page links to her Twitter feed, which was only set up this month and has no tweets yet.