Report: James O'Keefe To Pay $100K Settlement To Former ACORN Employee

SIMON MALOY/Media Matters For America

According to court documents obtained by Wonkette, conservative activist James O'Keefe has agreed to a $100,000 settlement in a lawsuit filed against him by Juan Carlos Vera, a former employee of ACORN. Vera filed the suit against O'Keefe in 2010, alleging O'Keefe had illegally taped their conversation at an ACORN office in California as part of his fraudulent"exposé" of the community activist group.

Vera was one of the ACORN employees portrayed in O'Keefe's videos as offering assistance in setting up a nonexistent child prostitution ring. After his encounter with O'Keefe, Veracontacted the police to report "possible human smuggling," unaware that he had been duped. Vera claims he lost his job as a result of O'Keefe's deception after the conservative's video of their encounter was posted on a Breitbart website.

According to the settlement documents obtained by Wonkette, O'Keefe has agreed to "pay Vera $100,000.00," and that "as part of this settlement O'Keefe states that at the time of the publication of the video of Juan Carlos Vera he was unaware of Vera's claims to have notified a police officer of the incident. O'Keefe regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family."

After the ACORN prostitution hoax fell apart, O'Keefe and his Project Veritas group released a series of heavily edited undercover sting videos attempting to document voter fraud, most of which collapsed under scrutiny, sometimes spectacularly so.

DOCUMENTARY PROOF: James O’Keefe’s Latest Video Is A Fraud

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress


As ThinkProgress documented this week, both of the “non-citizens” shown in James O’Keefe’s latest video sting supposedly committing voter fraud by participating in American elections are actually Americancitizens.

Following our stories, ThinkProgress readers confronted O’Keefe with these facts on his Facebook page. The conservative filmmaker refused to acknowledge that the two “non-citizens” he smeared in his video, Zbigniew Gorzkowski and William Romero, are actually American citizens, demanding “official documentation that proves otherwise” before he’d correct his story.

Romero’s family provided this official documentation to ThinkProgress last night. Here is a scanned copy of Romero’s certificate of naturalization, issued on February 4, 2011. Redactions are ours:

To refresh, O’Keefe’s “proof” that Romero had committed voter fraud was that he refused jury duty in 2010 for not being a citizen but then registered to vote on December 5, 2011, as though there was no possible way his citizenship status could have changed in the interim year.

O’Keefe has pledged to correct the story if someone showed proof that it was wrong. Setting aside his misguided ethics of being willing to report outlandish smears but putting the responsibility on others to prove whether his allegations are factually correct, we have taken the liberty of providing this proof.

If O’Keefe — or any of his proponents who so enthusiastically lauded the conservative filmmaker for supposedly exposing “massive voter fraud” — issues a correction, we will update this story.

FACT CHECK: ‘Non-Citizen’ Voter In James O’Keefe’s Voter Fraud Video Is Actually A Citizen

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress


Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released a new video today supposedly exposing voter fraud in North Carolina by highlighting non-citizens like Zbigniew Gorzkowski who have voted in recent elections.

The problem: Gorzkowski is an American citizen.

In fact, if O’Keefe had done a simple Nexis search for “Zbigniew Gorzkowski”, he would have found a single article from the News & Observer in 2008 noting that Gorzkowski and his wife are naturalized citizens:

Customers flock through the red door of Zbigniew “Ziggy” and wife Halina Gorzkowski’s European grocery and flower shop to buy one of the 12 varieties they sell. The pierogis and 400 eastern European food items and flowers are also punching the naturalized citizen couple’s ticket for their version of the American Dream.

ThinkProgress spoke with Gorzkowski this morning. He verified that this information was indeed correct and he had been an American citizen since the late 1980s. Therefore, his votes in the 2008 and 2010 elections were not only perfectly legal, but encouraged as a civic duty.

In other words, 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.

The episode does speak to a larger underlying problem with most accusations of voter fraud. It’s what I call the “Scooby Doo routine”. People like O’Keefe make wild voter fraud accusations like non-citizens voting, only to discover a much simpler explanation for the situation.

In this case, O’Keefe is using “evidence” of foreigners voting in American elections to supposedly demonstrate the need for draconian security measures like voter ID, which could disenfranchise 20 million citizens across the country. However, his evidence actually shows nothing more than an American citizen exercising his civic duty. Earlier this year, South Carolina went through the same Scooby Doo routine after Attorney General Alan Wilson claimed to have unearthed evidence of 953 dead voters, only for his state investigation to ultimately find no dead voters — and zero voter fraud — but rather a handful of clerical errors.

O’Keefe has a responsibility as a journalist to ensure the veracity of his facts before he makes wild charges like these. A simple phone call or Nexis search would have sufficed, yet doing so would have undercut his spurious argument that voter fraud is a widespread problem in the United States.

A reality check for voter fraud claims

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James O’Keefe has another run-in with the law

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James O’Keefe’s Group Appears To Commit Voter Fraud In Order To Gin Up Hysteria Over Non-Existent Fraud Problem

By Scott Keyes/Think Progress

James O’Keefe’s latest video features surrogates appearing to commit voter fraud in yesterday’s New Hampshire primary election, all in an attempt to highlight voter fraud, a problem which is by-and-large nonexistent in the Granite State.

The undercover video shows unnamed individuals working at O’Keefe’s behest approaching polling stations throughout New Hampshire. After poll workers asked for the person’s name, O’Keefe’s agents gave the name of a voter who died within the past few weeks, before then receiving a ballot to vote. The individuals asked the poll workers if they needed ID to prove their identity, and when poll workers confirmed that they did not, O’Keefe’s men insisted on returning to their car to retrieve their ID and returned the ballot.

However, in highlighting the non-problem of voter fraud in New Hampshire and elsewhere, O’Keefe’s agents appear to have committed voter fraud themselves. Section 659:34 of the New Hampshire code defines voter fraud as when a person (highlights are ours):

(a) When registering to vote; when obtaining an official ballot; or when casting a vote by official ballot, makes a false material statement regarding his or her qualifications as a voter to an election officer or submits a voter registration form, and election day registration affidavit, a qualified voter affidavit, a domicile affidavit, or an absentee registration affidavit containing false material information regarding his or her qualifications as a voter;

(b) Votes more than once for any office or measure;
(c) Applies for a ballot in a name other than his or her own;
(d) Applies for a ballot in his or her own name after he or she has voted once;
(e) Votes for any office or measure at an election if such person is not qualified to vote as provided in RSA 654; or
(f) Gives a false name or answer if under examination as to his or her qualifications as a voter before the supervisors of the checklist or moderator.

In the raw footage released by O’Keefe (reproduced below), at 12:32, the poll worker asks the unnamed individual, “what’s your name again?” The man replies with the name of a dead New Hampshire voter, “Thomas McCarron.” She then asks if he lives at “179 Harrison Street?” The man affirms, “yes.”

In another instance, at 5:00, the poll worker checks off the individual’s fake name and says, “that’s you.” He does not correct her, but implicitly affirms the false identity by taking the ballot she hands him.

In addition, O’Keefe’s group may have run afoul of New Hampshire’s law against hidden recording devices. Granite State law requires both parties to consent when recording devices are used, a fact that even O’Keefe’s own website notes. However, the video gives no indication that poll workers were aware they were being filmed.

One section of footage not released by O’Keefe, however, was when a surrogate was caught at the polls trying to impersonate a dead voter. The Boston Herald notes that the man “disappeared before police could corral him.”

Setting aside the legality of O’Keefe’s stunt, it is important to note that virtually no one – outside of O’Keefe’s agents – actually commits voter fraud. A seminal Brennan Center study on the matter, entitled “The Truth About Voter Fraud“, found that people were far more likely to be stuck by lightning than ever impersonate another voter at the polls. The study examined possible voter fraud in New Hampshire during the 2004 election, but was unable to find evidence for anything close to widespread fraud. Even if four questionable incidences proved true – one involved a “domestic violence victim, who voted from an old address in order to avoid disclosing her current domicile – it would amount to an overall fraud rate of 0.0006%.

James O’Keefe Operative: He’s Only Interested In A ‘Hit Job’

By Alex Seitz-Wald/Think Progress

Two key players in one of James O’Keefe’s highest-profile projects are speaking out against the conservative provocateur, and the picture they paint isn’t pretty.

O’Keefe has long maintained that he’s a serious journalist who employs a “form of investigative reporting that you use to seek and find the truth.” But Simon Templar, who played the faux Muslim donor in an infamous undercover piece on NPR, told the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz that O’Keefe is only interested in producing “hit job[s].” Templar, who wanted to carry out a “thoroughly researched and impeccably executed project” on the supposed threat of Sharia law, says O’Keefe rushed the project to maximize its political impact and didn’t care if the final report ended up being “extremely slipshod“:

Shaughn Adeleye, who worked with Templar in posing as another member of the phony Muslim group, also disagreed with O’Keefe’s tactics. “We were both sold a false bill of goods,” says Adeleye, who devised the NPR scheme and persuaded O’Keefe to adopt it. [...]

“I felt deceived and misled because James did not live up to what we all agreed upon would be a multifaceted project,” says Adeleye, who was born in Nigeria. “After a while I could not deny the truth anymore.”[...]

“I was always struggling to pull him away from his shtick of walking into an office with a bizarre pretense and taping some secretary or low-level worker,” says Templar. “I wanted him to think much bigger.”

Indeed, while the video caused a major stir (and grave overreaction) at NPR, it was widely discredited, most importantly by Glenn Beck’s conservative The Blaze website.

Templar and Adeleye said O’Keefe pushed so hard in part because he was “desperate” “in terms of money and needing to rehabilitate his reputation.” While the concept of O’Keefe as an obsessive self-promoter with little regard for the facts isn’t new, it’s noteworthy to see his co-conspirators confirm it.

UPDATED: The Lies Of James O'Keefe

From Media Matters

Convicted criminal James O'Keefe has released a new video -- this time attacking Huffington Postreporter Sam Stein and the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan progressive think tank. Journalists covering the story should be aware of O'Keefe's history of lies and deception.

James O'Keefe: A history of lies, falsehoods, and deception

O'Keefe Doctored NPR Video. In March, O'Keefe was caught doctoring an undercover video of an NPR official to make it appear that the NPR official had referred to Tea Party participants as "xenophobic." In reality, the NPR official had attributed that sentiment not to himself, but rather to two Republicans he had spoken with. O'Keefe's deception in this case was so blatant that it was criticizedby Glenn Beck's website.

O'Keefe Falsely Claimed That ACORN Tapes Were A "Nationwide ACORN Child Prostitution Investigation" That Implicated Many ACORN Employees. Discussing the ACORN videos created by O'Keefe and fellow conservative activist Hannah Giles, O'Keefe falsely claimed that the video campaign was a "nationwide ACORN child prostitution investigation" implicating many ACORN employees. But in at least six of the eight heavily edited videos produced by O'Keefe and Giles and distributed by Andrew Breitbart, either the activists did not clearly tell the ACORN employees that they were planning to engage in child prostitution; or the ACORN employees refused to help them or apparently deliberately misled them; or ACORN employees contacted the police following their visit.

Law Enforcement Officials Criticize O'Keefe's "Highly Selective Editing Of Reality." Three separate investigations cleared ACORN workers of any criminal wrongdoing, and a December 22, 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service stated that California and Maryland criminal laws may have been violated by the undisclosed taping done by O'Keefe. California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, Jr. pointed out that the videotapes were "severely edited by O'Keefe." In a statement, Brown said, "The evidence illustrates ... that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor." Likewise, a March 1 New York Daily News article reported that "a law enforcement source" said of O'Keefe and Giles: "They edited the tape to meet their agenda." A March 2 New York Post article, headlined "ACORN set up by vidiots: DA," reported of O'Keefe and Giles' ACORN tapes: "Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said."

Breitbart And O'Keefe Withheld Exculpatory LA ACORN Video For Two Months. For more than two months after Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com website began posting videos in which O'Keefe and Giles supposedly posed as a pimp and prostitute in ACORN offices, O'Keefe and his cohorts withheld video that directly contradicted what they suggested the videos showed. In September 2009, Giles and Big Government editor-in-chief Mike Flynn had both falsely claimed that every ACORN office O'Keefe and Giles visited had offered to help them. Also during September 2009, both Breitbart and O'Keefe were asked directly by reporters whether any ACORN offices had refused to help; Breitbart and O'Keefe chose not to disclose the existence of a tape that showed at least one ACORN worker who refused to help. In a video released November 16, 2009, O'Keefe finally acknowledged that a Los Angeles ACORN worker they filmed in August 2009 "would not assist us obtain a house for our illegal activities."

O'Keefe Pleaded Guilty To Misdemeanor Criminal Charge Of Entering Senate Office Under False Pretenses. As reported by The Times-Picayune on May 26:

The four defendants who were arrested in January in Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs federal complex in New Orleans pleaded guilty Wednesday morning in federal court to entering real property belonging to the United States under false pretenses.

Magistrate Judge Daniel Knowles III sentenced Stan Dai, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan each to two years probation, a fine of $1,500 and 75 hours of community service during their first year of probation.

James O'Keefe, as leader of the group and famous for posing as a pimp in ACORN office videos, received three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service.

O'Keefe's BigGovernment Video Omits Relevant Clip In Claiming That "Census Supervisors" Were "Systemically Encouraging Employees To Falsify Information On Their Time Sheets." In a ten-minute video posted on BigGovernment.com in June 2010, O'Keefe stated that he had been hired as a Census worker and attended two days of training. He said, "What I found were Census supervisors systematically encouraging employees to falsify information on their time sheets." The video includes clips of census leaders, who according to O'Keefe, "didn't seem to have a problem with the discrepancy" of the hours recorded on his time sheet versus the hours he claimed to have worked. O'Keefe omitted a clip that was later aired by ABC, which shows a census leader emphasizing the importance of accurately reporting on miles driven by census enumerators. 

Friend Of O'Keefe Reportedly Objected To Past Transcript Distortion. A September 18, 2009, New York Times article reported that Liz Farkas, a college friend of O'Keefe's while at Rutgers University, said she "grew disillusioned" after O'Keefe asked Farkas to help deceptively "edit the script" of a video involving a nurse at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Anonymous: James O’Keefe lives with his parents

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

A group of hacktivists associated with “Anonymous” and the AntiSec movement on Wednesday published the personal information of conservative prankster James O’Keefe online.

Going by the name CabinCr3w, the group announced it had published details relating to his age, home address, probation officer, education, family, and work because he worked with conservative Andrew Breitbart and was trying to belittle the “Occupy Wall Street” protest.

The group noted that O’Keefe now lives with his parents because of parole restrictions and successfully led a campaign to ban Lucky Charms cereal from his school cafeteria because it stereotyped Irish people.

He pleaded guilty to entering property belonging to the United States under false pretenses in May and was sentenced to three years of probation. O’Keefe and three of his comrades were arrested after posing as telephone workers and entering Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office.

CabinCr3w has aligned itself with the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protest and previously published the personal information of numerous employees of the financial giant Goldman Sachs, including CEO Lloyd Blankfein. CabinCr3w also released personal information of a New York police officer who was seen in videos pepper spraying female protesters.

In the video that provoked CabinCr3w, O’Keefe posed as a Wall Street banker and walked amongst the crowd at the weeks-long “Occupy Wall Street” demonstration. The majority of the video is dedicated to a person at the protest who hopes O’Keefe will make an odd investment in his “Constitutional World Federation.”

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

Let's Indict Andrew Breitbart!

By Mike Sax/Diary of a Republican Hater


 I have just started the following petition to do just this,

    "Breitbert and his partner in slander, James O'Keefe, have single-handedly destroyed many worthy public servants and institutions, most notably Acorn which provided help and assistance to many low income Americans who desired to buy homes.

    Breitbart and O'Keefe's fraudulent video-based on entrapment, lies, and doctored footage-was the basis for Acorn's slander, defunding, and criminal prosecution.

   While it was ultimately found innocent, Acorn is now broke and its reputation is wrongly sullied.

   Mr. Breitbart needs to be held accountable and found both civilly and criminally responsible as his actions have stolen literally millions from the public in the form of the services Acorn provided.

    Mr. Breitbart and O'Keefe also continue their tireless campaign against the American people and their interests, by targeting any public individual or institution that in any way serves their interests and needs.

    Currently for instance he is attacking among many other falsely maligned targets, Media Matters, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

    A prosecution of Mr. Breitbart-and O'Keefe-will serve the multiple functions of holding him accountable, recompensing his many victims, and also will provide an "ounce of prevention" by slowing down or stopping the harm he continues to work tirelessly to visit on the American people.

   A true social criminal, Mr. Breitbart must be stopped in his tracks."

    Please join with me in stopping him in his tracks by signing this petition.

    To sign please either go here http://www.change.org/petitions/mike-l-sax-indict-andrew-breitbart

    Or follow the link on the front page of Diary of a Republican Hater "Let's Indict Andrew Breitbart."

NY Times Whitewashes O’Keefe’s ACORN, NPR Video Scams

 by Eric Boehlert/Media Matters

Assigning a Rush Limbaugh fan and biographer to profile right-wing activist James O’Keefe wasn’t exactly a daring choice by editors at The New York Times Magazine. The fact that the resulting puff piece is a predictably soft retread of O’Keefe’s often-told tale should surprise no one.

What is odd is that the Times would publish such comically inaccurate characterizations of O’Keefe’s adventures in undercover video stings; stings that have proven time and again he’s incapable of telling the truth.

Those are the facts. They are not in dispute. But in the loving hands of Times writer Zev Chafets, O’Keefe is portrayed as an enterprising, muckraking journalist. And in the loving hands of Zev Chafets, O’Keefe is portrayed exactly the way O’Keefe wants to be portrayed.

I realize that’s Chafets’ niche at the Times, to bring his partisan, conservative perspective when writing profiles of partisan conservative media figures, and to do his best to paper over anything unflattering about the subject at hand. That’s what he did with his New York Times Magazine cover story on Limbaugh in 2008. (The super-soft profile helped Chafets land a Ditto-ography book deal.)

And I understand why Chafets likes the very easy gig. It makes little sense, though, why the Timeswould be interested in publishing this kind of predictable feature about O’Keefe. Regardless of the motivation, what about the facts? What about O’Keefe’s ACORN and NPR stings for instance, and the controversy that soon engulfed him over allegations he had edited his clips in order to concocts sinister stories? How does the Times deal with those issues?

Not well.

A quick NPR refresher: Last March, O’Keefe unveiled a video sting designed to expose NPR’s liberal bias. It featured NPR fundraiser Ron Schiller having lunch with two potential (albeit fake) deep-pocket Muslim donors and Schiller making disparaging comments about Republicans and Tea Party members. We soon discovered, via Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze, that the tapes had been highly edited and done so in an unethical way to make the Schiller comments seem much more damning than originally believed.

Now here, in its entirety, is how Chafets deals with the firestorm that erupted around O’Keefe’s NPR tapes when it was they revealed they were fraudulent.

When it was suggested that the tapes had been dishonestly edited, O’Keefe invited people to watch them in their entirety. “He said it, that’s just a fact,” Dana Davis Rehm, a spokesman for NPR, said of Ron Schiller. In the aftermath, NPR conducted sessions on ethics for its support and operational staff and is planning to publish updated ethics guidelines in September. 

Gee, that doesn’t sound like that big of a deal: People raised questions and O’Keefe graciously invited them to view the full tapes.

Gimme a break.

From Time [emphasis added]:

Schiller did say some bad things, the Blaze found. But the short video took them out of context, like a bad reality show, and made them sound worse. It transposed remarks from a different part of the meetingto make it seem as if Schiller were amused by the group's "goal" of spreading Shari'a law. It left examples of his complimenting Republicans on the cutting-room floor. And that Tea Party quote? Schiller was, for at least part of it, describing the views of some Republican friends. Somehow — oops! — O'Keefe left that bit out.

You can add to those key points the fact that Schiller clearly stated on several occasions that funding donations, no matter how generous, have no effect on NPR’s news operation.

In other words, the entire premise of O’Keefe’s NPR gotcha was proven to be a fraud. There weren’t simply implications the tapes had been deceitfully cropped.  That was proven to be the case. Period.

It makes you wonder how anyone at the Times can square that factual assessment with the idea that it was merely “suggested” that O’Keefe’s ACORN tapes had been “dishonestly edited.” It also makes you wonder why the Times assigned Rush Limbaugh’s biggest fan to write puff piece about James O’Keefe.

Meanwhile, ACORN. Here’s Chafets:

His takedown of Acorn was even more devastating, although Bertha Lewis, Acorn’s former chief executive, contends that the videos were dishonest. “He is demon, a liar and a cheat,” she says. “What he did was despicable. He created a fiction.” Bertha Lewis still insists that Acorn did not offer advice on how to break the law. Clark Hoyt, a former public editor for The New York Times, reviewed O’Keefe’s raw footage and edited tapes and concluded that “the most damning words match the transcripts and the audio, and do not seem out of context.” There is no doubt that O’Keefe disseminated only the material that supported his thesis about Acorn, but this kind of selectivity is the norm in advocacy journalism. 

Really? It’s normal in advocacy journalism to withhold exculpatory information in order to tell the story you want to tell? It’snormal to dishonestly edit videos in order to give viewers a false impression of what actually occurred? And it’s normal to flat out manufacture lies, the way O’Keefe did by suggesting he entered ACORN offices decked out in a Halloween-ish pimp costume?

This is just embarrassing.

Meanwhile, for those interested in detailed reviews of O’Keefe’s ACORN production, at least three of them have been conducted. All  three confirmed that while some ACORN employees behaved inappropriately in the O’Keefe videos, they did not break the law. And all three confirmed that O’Keefe did severely edit the tapes.  Also, a 2009 report by the Congressional Research Service stated that O'Keefe's undercover videotaping may have broken laws in California and Maryland.

But for some reason Chafets does not mention the findings that completely undercut O’Keefe’s ACORN hoax. (Or the fact O’Keefe is currently being sued by an ACORN worker in response to one of the undercover videos.)  Chafets also ignored the pimp lie that O’Keefe spread with the help of his mentor, Andrew Breitbart.

Then again, in telling the O’Keefe tale Chafets also opts to make no mention of the fact that last summer O’Keefe planned to set a bizarre, floating trap to sexually humiliate a CNN reporter. 

So yes, the Times does a great job dressing up O’Keefe and pretending he’s an important person.