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Tag: james o'keefe

  • Long Island law firm sues Project Veritas over legal fees | Long Island Business News

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    Lake Success-based has filed a against the right-wing for stiffing the law firm for payment of . 

    The lawsuit filed in Nassau County State Supreme Court on Wednesday claims that Mamaroneck-based Project Veritas has not paid for legal services rendered by the firm and that the client has yet to make any payments on a balance due of $103,672.03. 

    The complaint asserts that between Jan. 5, 2021 and Sept. 19, 2023, Abrams Fensterman worked on a number of cases on behalf of Project Veritas, including a lawsuit the nonprofit lodged against The in 2020, after the newspaper described some videos from Project Veritas as part of a “coordinated disinformation effort.” The suit was withdrawn in July 2025. 

    In the lawsuit filed by Abrams Fensterman, the firm stated that the amount owed by Project Veritas is “above the threshold amount” for arbitration, so it had to sue for the money instead. 

    Attorney , who filed the lawsuit on behalf of her firm, has yet to respond to a request for comment. 

    Project Veritas could not be reached for comment. 

    Founded by in 2010, Project Veritas is described in published reports as a far-right activist group, which targeted main-stream media outlets and progressive organizations. In the exposé published by the Times in 2020, for which Project Veritas sued for defamation, the newspaper chronicled the group’s use of undercover operatives to infiltrate “Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda.” 

    Project Veritas suspended its operations “amidst severe financial woes,” in Sept. 2023, according to Mediaite.com. 

    Headquartered in Lake Success, Abrams Fensterman also has offices in Brooklyn, White Plains, Albany and Rochester, according to its website. 


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    David Winzelberg

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  • Project Veritas’ First Amendment Claim To the Diary of Biden's Daughter Denied By Judge

    Project Veritas’ First Amendment Claim To the Diary of Biden's Daughter Denied By Judge

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    Criminal prosecutors are expected to get their hands on nearly 1,000 documents related to the alleged theft of the diary of Ashley Biden, the only child of President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden, after a judge rejected the conservative group Project Veritas’s First Amendment claim.

    Project Veritas’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, said Monday that the group is considering appealing the ruling, according to a report from The Associated Press. The organization has until January 5 to turn over the material.

    The documents stem from November 2021 FBI raids on the homes of the organization’s founder, James O’Keefe, and two of his associates. Federal agents ultimately seized 47 cell phones, computers, memory sticks, and other electronic devices, according to a report from New York Magazine. O’Keefe left the organization last February following a management dispute.

    Since the raid, O’Keefe has maintained that the FBI investigation into Project Veritas’s activities—which he argues were legitimate attempts at newsgathering violates the First Amendment. In this effort, he’s drawn support from the American Civil Liberties Union, which warned after the raid that, despite Project Veritas’s well-documented “disgraceful deceptions,” the “precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom.”

    In its written arguments before Judge Analisa Torres, lawyers for Project Veritas and O’Keefe argued the investigation “seems undertaken not to vindicate any real interests of justice, but rather to stifle the press from investigating the President’s family.”

    Torres ruled that Project Veritas’s First Amendment arguments were “inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent” and that the group’s claim to be protecting the identities of a confidential source was voided by the fact that both people who sold the diary to the group pled guilty in August 2022.

    In their guilty plea for conspiring to traffic in stolen goods, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander—both of whom are currently awaiting sentencing—admitted they stole Biden’s diary from a house in Florida and sold it to Project Veritas for $40,000, hoping to embarrass the then-presidential candidate as he challenged former President Donald Trump. (Before he was elected, Trump was a donor to the organization.)

    Project Veritas has admitted it paid Harris and Kurlander, but O’Keefe has said the group did not publish any information from the diary after it could not confirm its authenticity.

    The court ruling comes two weeks after Hannah Giles, O’Keefe’s replacement as CEO, announced on social media that she was quitting, saying she had “stepped into an unsalvageable mess — one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and post-financial improprieties.” Giles added that she had brought evidence of illegal behavior to “the appropriate law enforcement authorities.”

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    Jack McCordick

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  • James O’Keefe Is Under Investigation and Project Veritas Is Finally Going to S–t

    James O’Keefe Is Under Investigation and Project Veritas Is Finally Going to S–t

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    It’s been six months since James O’Keefe, the founder and ex-chief executive of right-wing media nonprofit Project Veritas, had a falling out with the board of his own brainchild that caused his exit from the company. But the dust, it appears, has still yet to settle.

    The far-right activist is now the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Westchester County district attorney’s office. And while the thrust of the probe is unclear, The Nation—which first broke the news on Friday—noted that it could be tied to claims that O’Keefe misused donor funds during his time at Project Veritas. O’Keefe left the outfit in February after complaints from board members that he spent “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries,” a claim that O’Keefe has denied.

    A spokesperson for the Westchester County district attorney’s office declined to reveal the nature of the investigation when contacted by The Nation. “We don’t talk about how we start our investigations,” Jin Whang, director of public affairs at the office, said in a statement. “But if you want confirmation that we were and are [investigating O’Keefe], then yes. We can confirm that.” (O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.)

    Hannah Giles, the current CEO of Project Veritas, told The Nation that “Project Veritas did not initiate any potential investigation the Westchester DA’s office may be conducting with respect to James O’Keefe. However, PV cooperates with the authorities as required by law.”

    Project Veritas—a group notorious for launching controversial “sting” operations against perceived enemies of conservatives—was behind a civil suit against O’Keefe filed in May. That suit accuses him of financial impropriety, attempting to siphon donors and employees from Project Veritas to launch a new project, and breaking a non-disparagement clause amid his messy break up with the nonprofit in February.

    The Westchester County probe is not the only strange twist of fate of the organization of late: In a Thursday post published by the official Project Veritas X (formerly known as Twitter) account, Giles was accused of laying off the entire staff. “SOS Hannah Giles just fired us all,” read a now deleted X post. Giles did not respond to a request for comment about the post. But The Post Millennial, a conservative news website, reported Thursday that numerous Project Veritas employees were fired this week. Moreover, Charlie Kirk, an O’Keefe ally and founder of the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA, posted that “Project Veritas has fired virtually its entire staff. Only a skeleton crew of HR and a few fundraisers remain.”

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    Caleb Ecarma

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  • James O’Keefe ousted from right-wing activist group Project Veritas | CNN Business

    James O’Keefe ousted from right-wing activist group Project Veritas | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas — the right-wing activist group known for its selectively edited undercover sting videos targeting journalists and progressive groups — has been ousted from the organization, he told staff in a videotaped speech posted online Monday.

    “I’ve been stripped of my authority as CEO and removed from the board of directors,” O’Keefe said in a prepared statement to the group’s staff. “I’m indefinitely suspended from this organization,” he added.

    R.C. Maxwell, a Project Veritas spokesperson, said on Twitter that O’Keefe “was removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board.”

    The right-wing group, which was founded in 2010 and quickly rose to notoriety, has used its undercover sting videos to target news organizations, including CNN and The New York Times. The group’s highly edited videos, which have often promoted disinformation and conspiracy theories, have been featured prominently on Fox News and in the right-wing media universe to fundraise and generate publicity for the group.

    Federal authorities have been investigating Project Veritas for its involvement in the 2020 theft of a diary kept by President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley. Two people who sold Ashley Biden’s journal and other items to Project Veritas for $40,000 pleaded guilty last year to stealing her belongings.

    The removal of O’Keefe from the nonprofit organization that he founded more than a decade ago came after an internal memo reportedly signed by members of the staff earlier this month and presented to the group’s board alleged that O’Keefe was “outright cruel” to his employees.

    Daniel Strack, executive director of Project Veritas, acknowledged in a statement last week that there had been “real management concerns regarding the treatment of people” and internal processes at the group. Strack denied that O’Keefe had been removed from Project Veritas, calling him the “hardest working person I have ever met,” but said that O’Keefe had been forced to take time off from the organization.

    Earlier that day, the 38-year-old O’Keefe was pictured on a hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains with anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

    O’Keefe said in the video posted Monday that he had apologized to the group’s board for his “tone” in the office, but that his apology was not accepted or considered sincere.

    In a statement Monday, Project Veritas said that while its leadership “has not concluded looking into the full scale of financial issues over the years, a preliminary review at this time indicates that James has spent an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries. More is still being uncovered during the ongoing review at this time.”

    The organization said those expenses include “$14,000 on a charter flight to meet someone to fix his boat under the guise of meeting with a donor” and “over $150,000 in Black Cars in the last 18 months.”

    “Even with all of this public fallout, the Board still wants to speak with James,” the statement said. “We did not fire him, nor do we want him to resign. We would like to continue conversations with James to resolve internal matters rather than litigate them publicly.”

    O’Keefe pledged to continue his activism and hinted he would form a new organization in his 44-minute speech to the group’s staff Monday.

    “I’m not done,” he said. “The mission will perhaps take on a new name.”

    – CNN’s Oliver Darcy contributed

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