James O’Keefe and Project Veritas unveil new plans

Last month, James O’Keefe was ousted from Project Veritas, the right-wing undercover journalists collective he founded. The public split included allegations of financial mismanagement and erratic, cruel behavior from O’Keefe, who in turn denied any wrongdoing and accused “evil” forces of conspiring against him.

Both sides promised to go ahead with their work, without immediately giving details of their plans. In the past few days, both have revealed more about their direction. Project Veritas is about teachers. O’Keefe is building an online “army” of spies for his new venture, O’Keefe Media, which launched today.

Project Veritas joins the ranks of conservatives in attacking teachers for nurturing children in what others see as simple acceptance and validation of LGBTQ children and acknowledgment of the existence of LGBTQ people. Conservatives have been waging war on the LGBTQ community, particularly transgender people, for well over a year.

In an email, Project Veritas claimed that public schools are full of “covert sexualized nursing” that it will uncover.

“Project Veritas intends to do everything in our power to continue to expose radical educators bent on brainwashing and indoctrinating their students,” it said.

Project Veritas claimed its journalists were already meeting sources and secretly tapping people for its next “big story.”

However, according to a report by the Gateway Pandit, Project Veritas’ top journalists are fleeing the company.

She ended her email with an appeal for donations. “…[T]To put it bluntly, we cannot bring you the stories we make without the immediate financial support of Veritas Army,” she wrote.

The tone of this request suggests that there may be financial problems. After O’Keefe’s suspension, many of his outraged fans claimed that they would no longer donate to the group.

On Tuesday, Project Veritas released a video that was reportedly the result of several months of investigation.

“A fair warning to radical educators. Beware. We will expose you,” he wrote on Twitter.

The nine-and-a-half-minute video features teachers and administrators speaking about respecting children’s pronouns and preferred names, and discussing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies. Conservatives have increasingly attacked DEI policies and concepts in recent months.

“We brought speakers who taught children how to be anti-racist,” says a person identified as the school principal at one point.

The video has 850,000 views at the time of this writing.

While some were horrified by the footage, many others seemed less than impressed with Project Veritas’ new direction.

“Good stuff, but you have to understand the skepticism towards your organization now that you’ve basically stopped focusing on @pfizer?” commented one.

Several blamed it for crediting O’Keefe’s work. Given the allegation that the investigation took several months, much of the video would have been taken while he was still with Project Veritas.

Since the group he founded is pursuing public schools, O’Keefe also draws on the powers of an “army”.

Inspired by the recommendation of one of his Twitter followers, O’Keefe announced over the weekend that he is recruiting volunteer spies. To enter, people just have to buy a hidden camera from Amazon, take a selfie with it, and email the photo.

It’s not clear what they’re tasked with recording.

Many people commented on O’Keefe’s tweet and promised to get in touch. “I feel the call! Count me in!” wrote one.

Tuesday, O’Keefe claims that so far 20 people have signed up for his “citizen army”.

Wednesday morning he tweeted, “The Ides of March have come. We start today.”

O’Keefe’s new company is called O’Keefe Media Group and appears to have the same mandate as Project Veritas.

“By my side remains a small, tight-knit group of the world’s most elite journalists.”

O’Keefe promised never to close it as it is his alone.

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