Famously
subversive conservative thespian James O'Keefe has more critics than
most. Since sleazily punishing the community organizing group ACORN
into oblivion four years ago, the New Jersey native and former Andrew
Breitbart protege has become the scourge and intrigue of not only the
progressive left, but also of poor and working class folks
everywhere. In my own case, I spent much of this year tracing
O'Keefe's odd journey into infamy – a rabbit hole wrapped in an
enigma flushed down a rusty toilet in a soiled rubber.
But
while I might have had a filthy three-month fling with the O'Keefe
saga, there are several writers who have slummed with the near-daily
drama for years. Among the most entertaining and dedicated have been
Liz Farkas and Matthew Phelan at Wonkette; they've simultaneously
secured scoops related to O'Keefe's shady non-profit, Project
Veritas, and treated the happenings like the absurd pulp comedy
nuggets that they are. That gusto was on fully display yesterday, as
Phelan and Farkas dropped a six-figure bombshell that O'Keefe has
been ordered to pay $100,000 to a former ACORN worker who was fired
in the fallout.
This,
of course, comes after that same terminated employee – Juan Carlos
Vera – won a settlement against Hannah Giles, who appeared in the
ACORN videos dressed as a hooker. In both cases, Vera's California
attorney, Gene Iredale, leveraged the clear deception that Project
Veritas used in editing and disseminating video of Vera, and charged
that O'Keefe violated state law by recording without consent from
both parties. For detailed analyses of the entire ACORN sting and the
misleading narrative that the media wove around O'Keefe's breakout
smash, I recommend wasting your entire weekend perusing the numerous
reports done on the series. While he's an unapologetic Project
Veritas nemesis, I also recommend Brad Friedman's blog; as the courts
have now more or less proven, he had it right even back when the New
York Times got caught with their pants down and a fat load of
O'Keefe on their face.
As
Wonkette also reported, O'Keefe is already claiming his innocence,
and raising cash to continue his perpetual truth crusade. If his
track record is any indication, he'll probably bounce back from this,
both financially and in stature among vulture-conservatives, and
perhaps even get some more liberal operatives fired from their jobs.
But thanks to the leaked settlement, there's one thing he can't deny
– that Iredale and Vera kicked him where it hurts capitalist
monsters the worst. From Wonkette:
As Vera’s attorney Gene Iredale suggested to us in a telephone
interview, O’Keefe’s willingness to pay this exorbitant sum is,
by itself, a tacit admission of guilt. The sum is $35,000 more than
James received from Andrew Breitbart for his “life rights” based
on the top-shelf (derp-derp) quality of the ACORN videos in the first
place. So, a limited amount of justice has been served.
And
there's more news, as there always is in the O'Keefe underbelly. For
one, Vera's lawyer Iredale is also now representing Nadia Naffe, the
former Project Veritas spy who defected from the crew, and who told
the Phoenix her entire story for a 10,000-word feature that we
dropped last week. Naffe is suing Patrick Frey, a Los Angeles County
Deputy District Attorney who moonlights as a conservative blogger;
she's arguing that Frey's harassment of her – in the wake of her
rift with O'Keefe – has caused stress and emotional damage. The
case continues in court this month, and should be an interesting
spectacle considering the damage Iredale has already inflicted
against the rabid right-wing.
If all that's not enough, this particular tidbit about the
fiscal wiring at Project Veritas was also quite alarming:
Since
at least the spring of 2011, Veritas has contracted its fundraising
efforts to the direct-mail marketing firm American Target Marketing.
(atm!!! u guyz i just realized ha.) ATM’s founder and owner Richard
Art Viguerie is literally on his fourth decade running the operation
as an aggressively for-profit entity; it frequently nets more than
half of the money raised for its nonprofit or political clients, to
cover its own opaque “operational expenditures.”
Finally,
today's Wonkette follow-up also includes what may be the juiciest
breaking news of all – that O'Keefe has a book coming out in June
2013 (the same month, I'll add, that my next project – I Killed
Breitbart – will surface). In it, he is promising to reveal
“Never-heard before details surrounding this [Vera] case and much
more.” We can't wait for the goods, though the way this story
hurdles on, there will probably be more than a few more whoppers
before O'Keefe's big literary debut.
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