Modern Wisdom - #428 - James O'Keefe - The State Of Modern Journalism

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

James O'Keefe is an investigative journalist and the Founder of Project Veritas. Faith in mainstream media is at an all-time low. At a time when we need better quality information, pretty much everything seems like it's been made with spin in mind. Creating an alternative type of journalism is filled with legal, ethical, organisational and personal dilemmas and today James explains some of the biggest ones he faces. Expect to learn what it feels like to have Anthony Fauci call you out by name during a hearing, why James was raided by the FBI at 6am, James' response to criticisms about undercover reporting, how Project Veritas deals with the ethics of releasing undercover documents, whether James sees himself as impartial, how many times he's been sued and much more... Sponsors: Join the Modern Wisdom Community to connect with me & other listeners - https://modernwisdom.locals.com/ Get 10% discount on everything from Slater Menswear at https://www.slaters.co.uk/modernwisdom (use code MW10) Get 83% discount & 3 months free from Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/MODERNWISDOM (use code MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Check out Project Veritas - https://www.projectveritas.com/ Follow James on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jamesokeefeiii/    Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bonjour friends, welcome back to the show, my guest today, is James O'Keefe, he's an investigative journalist and the founder of Project Veritas. Faith in mainstream media is at an all-time low. At a time, when we need better quality information, pretty much everything seems like it's been made with spin in mind. Creating an alternative type of journalism is filled with legal, ethical, organizational and personal dilemmas. And today, James explains some of the biggest ones that he faces. Expect to learn what it feels like to have Anthony Fauci call you out by name during

a hearing. Why James was raided by the FBI at 6am. James's response to criticisms about undercover reporting, how Project Veritas deals with the ethics of releasing undercover documents, whether James sees himself as impartial, how Project Veritas deals with the ethics of releasing undercover documents, whether James sees himself as impartial, how many times he's been sued, and much more. No matter what you think about Project Veritas or their methods, James has never lost a lawsuit once. He's been sued a ton of times, he's been deposed a ton of times, he's got an entire wall in his office filled with retractions from other media organisations

with things that they've said about him which have later turned out to be false. And if he did have skeletons in the closet, there are some huge powerful people trying to find them, which kind of leads me to believe that there isn't any. I don't know whether Project Veritas' methods are the answer to the problems that were seeing with mainstream media, but I know that more of what mainstream media is doing probably isn't. So it's interesting to have someone that is genuinely grappling with these ethical dilemmas and doing it in public. So I really appreciate James for coming on and putting forward his thoughts. But now, please give it up for James O'Keefe. James, okay, welcome to the show. Great to be with you. Rogan called you the Boogieman.

You the Boogieman? Yes, in some respects, as journalism is printing what somebody does not want printed, not being the representative spokesperson on Budsman for those in power, if you're challenging, then I guess I'm a Boogieman, depends upon who you're talking to. The FBI stole your phone as well. If you got that back yet. No, I have not. They took two phones in a raid against me in November,

which is highly unusual, because they didn't take my iPad or my laptop, but they did have a search warrant signed by a magistrate judge in the Southern District of New York, which is Federal Court, and the federal judge ordered the FBI to stop going through my phones. And now it's in this sort of litigation, this sort of battle in court, in federal court. And a special master was assigned. People don't know what that means.

Usually it's a special independent legal official to oversee what the FBI is doing. And the federal judge cited journalistic privilege, which is a big win for Project Baratast. But I haven't been charged with a crime. I mean, we could spend an hour just on this matter, but it was absolutely unconstitutional, illegal for them to do this to an American journalist. And we're going to fight it. We're going to fight it all the way.

What was the story, though? Well, a source had given or transmitted me a document to Ashley Biden is the daughter of President Joe Biden, her diary. And I looked into it. There are some things in this diary. There are some things she wrote, including that she had taken showers inappropriately with her father. I didn't know what that meant. I did not know if it happened and I didn't know with a hundred percent certainty that the diary belonged to Ashley Biden. I was almost certain, but not totally certain. So I didn't run the story. I reached out to Joe Biden for comment.

I tried looking into it and I made the decision which was very controversial internally at Project Baratast and not run this diary, not publish a diary. And a year later, the Fed showed up at my door with a battering ram, a search warrant, put me in handcuffs, raided my apartment, and took my devices. And the Attorney General of the United States, Merritt Garland, expressly forbids these execution of these search warrants against journalists. Journalists in the United States are protected by Supreme Court law, Barneyke Vivopper from 2001. You can publish a document that is stolen so long as the journalist not participate in

the theft of that document. Think of it using common sense. If you stumble across a document, what is your, you can't be liable for that. But of course, we live in a clown world where two plus two equals five to quote your George Orwell, the late and great George Orwell from 1984, different laws apply to different people. The US attorneys in New York argue that I'm not a journalist for the judge. Their logic was, and I'm not making this up, I'm paraphrasing the prosecutors, their argument was James O'Keefe does not

get permission from the people he reports on your honor, and that's why he's not a journalist. Which is an argument so preposterous and so absurd, it defies reason, which is why I wrote this book called American Muckbreaker. What is the line between Ashley Biden's diary and the raid? How do you know that it's to do with that particular piece of information? between Ashley Biden's diary and the raid. How do you know that it's to do with that particular piece of information? Well, because it said as such in the, in the search warrant,

I, when I, after I was in, they put me in handcuffs, at first I thought I was under arrest. And then some 15 minutes later, they showed me a document that listed crimes, including accessory after the fact, and misprison of a felony. For those of you who don't know what that means

Miss prison of a felony is a very seldom prosecuted crime in the United States. It's a essentially a bystander law You see someone else committing a crime and you did nothing accessory after the fact includes transporting Stolen documents across state lines again. This is such an unbelievably poposterous crime. It would imply that all journalists in every newsroom should be incarcerated for emailing documents, given to them improperly. In fact, the New York Times published my attorney client privilege documents. Why aren't they rated by the FBI for transporting and properly obtained documents, but this is admittedly by the prosecutors in court regarding the Ashley Biden diary. You already had decided that you weren't going to publish. There was pressure internally

within your camp to maybe try and get you to do that and you decided that you weren't. So I'm trying to work out what this raid achieved. Do you think it was perhaps an excuse to be able to get access to your phone so that they could go through other stuff to try and see what else you're doing? And this was just fortunate timing. Well, I don't like to speculate. That's one of my rules in my ethics chapter.

I don't like to do that. I can't tell you who or what or why. It was so, I will be a little vulnerable by saying, I had been incarcerated 10 years ago in another story, another book I written in New Orleans. I was a journalist in a federal building asking questions and they shackled me and charged me with a crime.

So I had a bit of PTSD after this. I guess you could say, I was a little traumatized by the incident because it was so egregious. And I'm very fortunate. Okay. I have a good team. I've got good lawyers. I've survived a lot of things in my life. In fact, the first chapter of this book is called Suffering.

So I don't mean to sound like I'm whining or I'm complaining. However, when they go after the First Amendment, to quote Martin Luther King, a threat to justice anywhere, as a threat to justice everywhere, when they go after the First Amendment to quote Martin Luther King, a threat to justice anywhere, as a threat to justice everywhere, when they attack the First Amendment like this, it may be one of the most egregious things the government can do. And this is a rubicon they'd never crossed before. You have to go back to say the Pentagon papers for journals and to be challenged like this. Hell, I'm not sure the New York Times would publish the Pentagon papers in this paradigm that we find ourselves in, but it was definitely for me a wake up call. It was like, wow, they're going to cross this bridge now. They're going

to they're going to do this. And I don't know what they're I guess they thought I don't know what they thought. I was going to be intimidated. I wasn't intimidated. I would be a sociopath, not to be intimidated. Whenever they put you through a federal process with secret grand juries and FBI raids, it is hell. It is a kind of Dante's in Ferno. And I guess what I made the decision in lieu of this raid against my colleagues to make a statement, I did make a public statement. A lot of people thought that was unwise for someone who is under federal scrutiny, but

I know the truth shall set me free. And I clarified what the facts were and exactly what the facts were. I made a public facing statement and I continue to do our journalism I refuse we refuse to be intimidated silenced threatened it's un-american is what it and and and the ACLU and the report is committee came to our defense which shows me that there's still a then diagram in this country left and right and there's still an overlap even they who hate me thought that this was a bridge too far for them to cross. People do know these institutions and the press organizations and the FBI, and whoever it is that sometimes comes after you. They do know that every time they do that,

they just put more eyes on you. I don't know that they do know that. I take the biggest strife on the fact in ever. That's presupposing that someone in my position is willing to continue. And I write, I wrote a chapter in this book called Suffering. And it's painful, man. I mean, David Delighton, a colleague of mine who did the plan-parented videos. He was rated by Kamala Harris as she was now the vice president, but she was then the attorney general of California. It's a SWAT team. Took his hard drives. And you know, colleague, friend of mine, thrown cement at him at the Portland rallies. And I was in shackles in New Orleans. I'm talking federal, federal, not state. They put you in leg chains chains and they put you in a leather waste belt and an orange jumpsuit. And in that moment in space and time, I actually thought my life was over. It's very hard to

to bounce back from these sorts of things. You're in federal prison. Everyone that you know, this is 11 years ago, everyone thinks you're done for. You're over. It's game over. Everyone's calling you a criminal, a felon. You have to be a little bit of a masochist. You really have to like pain. But what, and I said this to Michaela when I met her too. It's like, when you're passionate, when you, when you believe so much in something and you have a vision for seeing it in something and you have a vision

for seeing it through, when you have a vision for showing people things, that's the most important value to you. And, and all these other things are sort of like distractions trying to get you off your game. Not easy though, certainly not easy and you certainly have to be built a certain way to withstand it. How many times have you been sued now? Dozens, we've never lost. Baratoss has never lost a lawsuit. That's something that's not on our Wikipedia page, by the way, you can go see. In fact, I'm most proud of the last year we sued the New York Times for defamation, and we won a historic victory in that case, the judge ruling in New York

state of all places, not a friendly jurisdiction, that it was the New York Times that acted with disinformation and deception towards me. People say, well, Keith, how could you be suing them for defamation? Aren't you pro-Ferst Amendment? Well, the first amendment doesn't protect defamation. You can't intentionally lie about a public figure. The New York Times versus Sullivan case established that in 1964. So the New York Times called our videos deceptive. They weren't.

And the New York Times admitted in court documents they got the facts wrong in an article about me. They have yet to correct the article, thus actual malice. So oftentimes, they accuse me of that, which they're guilty of. They'll say, I selectively at it, and I deceptively at it, well, that's what they do. They'll say, I don't ask for comment. Well, the New York Times admitted they didn't ask anyone

for comment in their piece about me. And we live in this sort of weird dystopian land where the media, everything that they're guilty of, they throw those accusations against me. And when you go to court, of course, those arguments sort of melt away when you're in cross-examination and depositions that rhetoric no longer exists, you are forced to confront the reality. And these cases get dismissed at jury verdict or in summary judgment. Yeah, you love a deposition. I love depositions. That's your pastime. That's how you spend a Sunday afternoon. Nice

deposition, cup of tea. Love it. Love it. I mean, you're not exaggerating. I mean, I actually do drink tea in the deposition. And people say, well, why would you like a deposition? Well, the reason is this, and this is a chapter called secrecy in this book. It took me 10 years to figure this out when I'm about to tell you. And it's so self-evident, I don't know why it took me this long. Secrets. I realized in the last probably three years, about two or three years ago, I can't keep secrets. The only thing I can keep secret is the names of our donors and the names of our whistleblowers. Everything else is

public. And they, that meaning all the people suing me, keep so many secrets. So in a deposition, I love it because I'm like, please do see my emails. You'll see a fairly ethical organization trying to do the right thing. Are we perfect? No, everyone makes mistakes. I think I've made a few mistakes in a decade, maybe two or three, but they make mistakes all the time and they try to conceal that. So when I enter discovery and litigation, we're going to win. Because in the deposition, you film the other party and you film me and please do film me. I'd like to engage you in a conversation. They don't want to have a conversation. They don't want to be asked questions, which is why they stop suing me because they quickly realize we're going to enter discovery

and they're going to lose. What are the biggest mistakes that you made? What was the biggest mistake that you've made over the last 10 years? Well, there was one, there was 11 years ago, as you have to go back to 10 years, 11 years ago in an NPR investigation, there was one, there was 11 years ago, as you have to go back to 10 years, 11 years ago, in an NPR investigation, there was a moment people will continually bring this up. I had covertly filmed the vice president of fundraising for national public radio and a restaurant. And he was saying something to the effect of white people are racist and gun-toting, the

racist, racist people. And there was an editorial edit in that moment where he was quoting somebody else and then halfway through the sentence, he starts to characterize himself. So people say, well, you deceptively edited this man. I defended the edit, but admittedly, I wish that I had that edit was fuller.

It was a 10 minute recording. I continue to defend that that people will bring this up as evidence that I'm deceptive editing. There was a case in 2012 when I reported on some documents showing a voter was a non-citizen. It turns out he was indeed a citizen.

I was referring to court documents that were themselves erroneous. And that's a little all that I could, oh the Pimp costume. In 2012 people say, well you didn't wear the Pimp costume into acorn. Now Hannah was dressed like a hooker. These are the Pimp and Hooker videos. But I said I established myself as a Pimp. I said I had hookers and I was wearing a satin tie with the camera in it. So people will use this as evidence. I'm a complete liar and a total fraud. You can't trust

anything I say because in 2009, I did not wear the the Huggie Bear costume into the offices. That's all that I can remember. These three things. And Eric Weinstein and Joe Rogue continuously said, everything that O'Keefe does is a lie. But can you tell me why? Because we want in court, you know, every single case. They say I edit, we take them to court, and the judge says nothing was edited improperly. In one case in North Carolina, in the Shirley Teeter case,

it went to jury verdict, and the federal judge said, looked at the plaintiffs and said if you sued Mike Wallace of 60 minutes For what you are suing project Veritas for everyone in this court would laugh So oftentimes their arguments are not really based in reality or reason it's based in ad hominem and kind of an emotional reaction I don't know legalities about recording people without their consent. I don't know how the law works in America. In the United States, in 38 states, it's perfectly legal. So so long as one party is consenting, what does that mean?

It means that you know that I'm speaking to you. You are with the person that is recording you. If you think about it, that makes sense. It's common law in America. If you are with a stranger and that stranger records you without you knowing that they're recording your conversation, well, we would believe that the recording device is an extension of the pencil and paper. In fact, in courts, courts have made the argument that society would not consider reasonable

and expectation of privacy, which would render a less accurate version of the events in question. You have more of a right there. Upton Sinclair, who authored the jungle, ran back to his apartment and wrote down what he saw, but a written rendition of facts is oftentimes not as accurate as a recording of those facts. So as long as one party is consenting, in other words, if you and I are at a bar and I'm talking to you and I'm recording you and you don't know that I'm recording you, it's legal. Now, there's 12 states where it's illegal, like for example, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, unless someone nearby can overhear us, we know, if someone nearby is able to overhear you,

then recording is permitted. In California, we often do our journalism and coffee shops. And in some states like Massachusetts, the law is so draconian or Oregon, so you can't even do that. We have challenged the constitutionality of those laws. Again, we believe recording someone that you're with is a constitutional right. And again, it's self-evident. You can write down what they say. No one's going to sue you for doing that. So we've been very successful in federal court in Massachusetts. We overturn the law in Massachusetts. Project Baratost did, again, another thing that you did not know that's been edited out of our Wikipedia page, we even overturned the law on the grounds it's unconstitutional. Do you think, do you struggle with it ethically? Beyond the fact that there

is a legal precedent for you to be able to record people, if there are people around to hear or if one party is the one that understands, do you feel like capturing somebody's image, their intonation, the way that they're talking about things when their God is down? Do you ever struggle with that ethically? Yes, I mean, this book, we struggle more with the ethics of what we do than anybody. Of course, the rub on us is that we're some unethical scumbags who just go around violating people's privacy. But the beauty and vein of ethics is that it's inherently situational to quote Jessica

Midford who authored a book called the, you know, authored a book on muck raking. And you know, there's always journalism is always going to harm people, information harms people. You know, and the first amendment is the first amendment to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution because all of the rights follow from the first amendment. So in a society, it places a primary value on information that's unauthorized. In other words, I'm publishing information. Really powerful people don't want published. You're going to harm people. Good journalism harms people. That's really what makes us American, I think, the values codified in the Bill of Rights.

In terms of deception, a hidden camera is not a form of deception. It's not a form of eavesdropping because the person knows they're being interviewed. It's not a form of eavesdropping because the person knows they're being interviewed. And it's not a form of entrapment. You have to go into this realm of undercover work to get to this whole idea of deception. And there's a whole chapter in this book called deception. I present the paradox of relative deception, which means you have two choices. You can deceive the audience or you can deceive your subject. And you're going to do one of these two things. And I would prefer to deceive my subject such that I can tell the truth to my audience. That only presumes, sorry James, that only presumes that the subject that you are speaking to would speak untruths if they knew that they were being recorded.

There is a situation in which you can speak to somebody right now, meaning you are having a conversation. I'm not trying to deceive anybody neither are you. So there is a possibility that you can do the recording without deception happening to either party. This is correct. And this is what I talked about with Eric Weinstein, but that presupposes that the person is going to be more honest on the record.

And I think it's a pretty fair assumption that we are talking about like Pfizer pharmaceutical and the Department of Justice and the Pentagon that these people people are like, yes, I'm a journalist. Please tell me about all the fraud you're committing. I think it's a pretty safe assumption that people in the Pentagon are not going to be honest to a self-identified report of the New York Times. And in this chapter called deception, I talk about this.

I say, you know, that the leak leaks, right? Someone in the New York Times gets leaked documents. Well, oftentimes the leaks, usually it's not in the form of documents, actually, it's in the form of an authorized statement from a two-star general. It's really a form of deception because the person in power

is usually manipulating the journalist. And usually those leaks are authorized leaks. The information is given to the journalist cons And usually those leaks are authorized leaks. The information is given to the journalist consensually. So we want to do these things non-consensually. We want to do these things without the permission from those in power, which does involve deception towards the source, not the audience. Speaking of leaks, how much of the recent aggression from the corporate press and social media companies do you think recent aggression from the corporate press and social media companies do you think is downstream from WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden?

Is everyone in power terrified of another huge scandal like that? I think that people, yes, I think that people in power are more terrified of us than we are of them. And I think that's a recent phenomenon. But I think with Ed Snowden, what strikes me about that, not Ed Snowden, Julian Assange is the indictment in Virginia, which I read. And what struck me about that indictment was the statement, I think in the indictment, said Julian Assange had prodded, was it Bradley Manning, A manning and said, curious eyes don't run dry. So it's all the idea that Assange was involved in the hacking.

He was involved. Now I don't know whether he was. If he did indeed hack the databases, well that's a felony. You can't do that. But if he merely prodded his source to give him more information, well that's his American is Apple Pie. And journalists do that all the time. But I think that they're afraid, yes, and Ed Snowden really kicked off that revolution, and Julian Assange kicked off that revolution. But now there's a whole army of whistleblowers

inside the government that are trying to follow their conscience and try to release information. We just had a story 10 days ago inside the Department of Defense, a Marine Corps Darbaphelow that authored this memorandum that called Anthony Fauci a liar. This is a Defense Department document that was buried on a top secret share drive, much similar to the Assange situation, and this document was given to Project Gerata and authenticated by Dr. Anthony Fauci. There are a lot more people inside the government that want to come forward. They're just afraid to be prosecuted the way that Manning was.

Was it a surprise to be addressed by Fauci by name? There were there were cheers in the Project Gerrata's newsroom, newsroom being an SUV that were all inside of when we were driving around that day on an undisclosed location. I think that Fauci, again, I think that Fauci fears us more than we fear him. The Marine Corps major was not the source of those documents, the guy who authored the guy at DARPA inside the defense department. But to my shock, we reached out to Joe Murphy, the Marine Corps major, and he told us I'm paraphrasing him here that there's a lot of good people inside the government trying to do the right thing, trying to reform it from within. I think the Marine Corps in particular, the military taken oath, you're not really going

to find military guys, you know, Marines blow the whistle against their beloved core. And I think there's really kind of, it seems to me that they're stuck in this dichotomy where they're trying to reform it from within and it's hard to do that. But, you know, this guy told us that there's other people out there that have information and they need to release it and I think they will. One of the criticisms that sometimes get put forward is that the people who are leaking documents or perhaps that are being caught on film, they're not specialists and even if they have some specialities,

they're maybe not the ones that are at the pinnacle of whatever triangle or hierarchy it is. This marine core guy, I'm not sure if he's a specialist in bioengineered weapons, in vaccines, in mandates, in public policy, and the same thing for the guy from Pfizer. I'm not sure how high up the dude that you caught on tape saying that natural immunity is better than vaccine protection you get from vaccines, is there a, is there a temptation to overblow the impact of a particular individual who you can say Pfizer worker or marine core general, you must have to think, well, look, how much does this person actually know? Because it'd be very easy to overblow their credentials and to make it seem like a bigger

deal than it is. How do you find that balance? Well, ultimately, accuracy is journalism's primary objective, and that's what makes journalism different than other forms of medium, like propaganda or Hollywood films. Accuracy is the most important thing. So the question is, is it true? So let me give you a pattern to run an ephema to what you just said. If the cleaning lady on Earth's the document and the Pentagon, what matters is if the document

is true. If a squirrel with its mouth takes the document and brings it to me, it doesn't matter. What matters is whether it's true and I will point you, you brought up Pfizer. Melissa was a whistleblower, she was a low-level person in Kansas or someplace like that. She had a relatively menial job, I would say, but she got access to the vice of the senior director's emails.

She got that because she was an employee at the firm and she was able to get the documents and the documents were indeed true. The senior director's file. What do you mean when you say true? The emails authored by Vanessa Gellman, who is a senior director advisor, said on paraphrasing as I don't have them in front of me, that we used fetal cells in the development of the vaccine and we don't want the consumer to know that.

So the statement by the senior director, quote, we don't want the people to know that, the consumer to know that. That's a true state. She did indeed make that statement. And it is newsworthy. And it was brought to us by a low level person who had access to high level information. The Marine Corps major, who wrote the documents, they're enough. Some people have questioned his credibility.

Dr. Fauci questioned his credibility, but the Department of Defense document clearly stipulates that eco-health alliance approached this firm eco-health alliance approached DARPA with gain of function, research, and it was rejected. The question is, is that true? That's all that matters. Whoever made the allegation, now I'm calling on Anthony Fauci to release information to the contrary, because this Marine Corps Major also stated, and the Department of Defense Document, that Anthony Fauci was approached by Eco Health Alliance under NIAD and proceeded.

So journalism's objective is to try to use however many sources you need to use to corroborate the information. And by the way, let me just add, the paragraph on investigative journalism these days in New York Times is they don't show you any documents. The Trump tax return story, not one document, not one on the record source. They just ask us to trust them by virtue of the fact they think they can be trusted by the decree they are indeed credible well that's a self-enointed racket i don't ask you to trust me i ask you to trust the evidence of your own eyes and ears i don't

think that very many people do trust those mainstream media organizations anymore i've never seen people who the u.k. isn't massively conspiratorial, right? The US leads the charge when it comes to that. And the people in the UK are not. Yet I see so much skepticism around what we see in the media on a day-to-day basis from people that are British. For that to have pushed people that are from this country to that degree. And then when I see the stuff coming across from America It seems to me like mainstream media has never been in as bad of a situation as this even if you were to look at Vietnam, you know the situation around Vietnam bring our boys home and people are chatt- I know that that's more against the government

But still it's a situation where I don't know is this Are they redeemable a mainstream media ever redeemable from this situation? I Think you bring up a various student point which I haven't heard articulated which is I think you're right I think I don't have not a pollster but is using my intuition I think you're I think the majority people don't trust the media actually I think some polls have indicated that they have a lower approval in Congress But but what I write about in this book is it's about fear. What do I mean by this? This is the most important point of the whole book. In Communist countries, 98%

of people did not want the Communist outcome, but were too afraid to push back against the two percent of the crazy for fear. I don't know if you're gonna lose their, whatever they have, they're afraid to lose something. And I see it in my own life with people that I know, that they know it's all a lie, but they're not going to push back against it. Let me give you a less abstract example. People that complain about the censorship

and complain about the lies, many of these people are unwilling to lose your Twitter accounts. You know who you are. You'll hesitate to speak the truth unspoken for fear that Jack Dorsey will ban you, or Instagram will take away your account. And we wouldn't want our Instagram taken away, would we? We wouldn't want our Twitter account taken away, would we?

At the very slippery slope, you're trying to climb. And I quote this guy, so it's Eatson in this book so many times, people say, what does Sultan Eatson have to do with it? Well, Sultan Eatson says, when you start to survive at any price, when you start to sacrifice your principles and your integrity to maintain what is yours, there's 120,000 people working for the Department of Justice.

I don't think they're all bad people. If you pulled them secretly, I think the majority of them thought it was horrible what happened to me. But how many of those people have the stones to blow the whistle on the Department of Justice? Can you find me one FBI agent who is willing to speak up publicly? Of course not. That person might be prosecuted. That person might go to jail, might be incarcerated.

And if nothing else, they might lose their pension. And we wouldn't want to lose our pension, would we? So I think you, I think it's you're right that people don't trust CNN and don't like the censorship. But I think there's a fear and a hesitation to do the right thing for fear of being branded with that scarlet letter, for fear of being defamed and disliked by all the people who have the power to brand you. Well, the problem is you kind of have a tragedy of the commons thing going on. One person's sacrifice, you know, one person goes to jail in order to tell everybody else about the lies, but nobody else has to go to jail.

But everybody else gets to benefit from the expose about whatever it is. So there's always this asymmetry of benefit and cost. One person or a small number of people are always going to bet all of the cost or the vast majority of the cost. And then everybody else gets to benefit from the release of information. So you know, from a personal situation, I see why people would be scared by this. I think though people, what's changed in 2013 when Ed Snowden did that, and Ed Snowden is the perfect personification of what you speak of, we would not know about the fourth

of them violations, is that what's changed, and I've seen it in my own life, and I read a chapter called Insiders, is that people place more in the variable of the equation. They place so much more emphasis on politics these days and they did five years ago because it's affecting. It's affecting everyone's children with the vaccine, for example. It's affecting where people want to live, that more people place more value on following their conscience than ever before in American history. And more people are placing more, they'll say I'll give it all up for the public's right to know. We've seen this in my life with, for example, Eric Cochran, who blew the whistle on Pinterest two years ago.

He was the first real whistleblower I've worked with. He was making a ton of money, working for a $15 billion company. And he released documents showing that Pinterest was censoring Bible verses. Now, you would have thought he was a crack pot. You would have thought I was a conspiracy theorist. He had the code. You couldn't type in a Christian Bible verse on Pinterest. It would change it to verses like a boxing match, not the Bible verses. And when he did it, he inspired Kerry Porch of CNN. And what happens is a sort of courage, contagious... Domino effect. porch of CNN. And what happens is a sort of courage, contagious,

Domino effect, contagious epidemic, domino effect. And I think you need to keep that veritas intense release of story on Wednesday of this week, featuring someone in the medical field showing little break a little news on your program here. And I won't say specifically what, but children in the vaccine, and this story is going to outrage pro vaccine people as much as it will outrage anti-vax people. And this woman that came to me was so scared, but same theme every single time, they thought that people had a right to know, and they thought that people's right to know exceeded their own value on their

own personal welfare. So I think you're going to see this happen more often than it did 10 years ago with Ed Snowden, Julian Assange. I want to get into some of the ethical difficulties that you have internally within Project Veritas. I'm fascinated by this. I'm fascinated by the fact that there must be a constant balancing act around what do we choose to publish? What do we choose not to have we met legal limits. There must be some degree of scrutiny and whatever advice you get from your lawyers. But then there's another step as well. So one of the things that I consider is that as you gain more and more popularity and your platform continues to grow, how do you avoid the risk of people who want to give you information

simply to be associated with Project Veritas? How do you ensure that your whistle blow is a legit? Well, that goes back to that corroboration. That goes back to, for example, the story, I'm just sort of teasing our video on Wednesday of this week where the insider works for the company. We asked to see their driver's license. You know, we interview them. There are recordings they provide.

I don't ask you to trust me or I've interviewed this source. She can say whatever she wants, but there's recordings of the thing actually happening. Okay, then you say, well, is that a deep fake video? Maybe those are fake videos. So you go talk to the people in the video and they are indeed real people and they admit they were recorded. So you do what you have to do. There's no, there's no rule that says you must interview five sources to confirm. You do whatever you have to do. And I think the evidence behind people say, well, James O'Keefe, you're a right wing extremist. Well, guess what?

If I was a right wing extremist, I would have published Ashley Biden's diary. And there were people in my life that said, well, you should do that. And they have a right to say that. Maybe they want to hurt Joe Biden. But my job is not to hurt Joe Biden. I felt like the stuff in that diary, even if it were real, which I was I was 99% certain the diary was real. I wasn't 100% could have been a setup. I felt that I should not see the the the private musings of this woman who I don't know. Maybe she was on drugs or she was right in poetry or diary. I don't know. I felt there are certain things the public shouldn't see. And I wrestled with this question and I actually wrote an email to my staff which is an exhibit in federal court before the prosecutors and it was this exhibit was presented for the federal judge and I'm going to read it to you.

I wrote this to my staff and I quoted Ernest Hemingway and I was thinking about what is ethics because of course ethics is subjective. Ethics depends upon what value you placed on the information people who who hate Joe Biden. They release any information. I wrote this. I said, Ernest Hemingway said, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after. And when it comes to journalism, it's really what you feel good about afterward. It is only that which makes you feel better than you would otherwise. And I just felt like publishing this woman's diary,

I just, there's something wrong about it. I don't think public eye should see it. Using undercover techniques, recording people, catching people, doing bad things, you can't justify the ethics of this in the abstract. It's like trying to say that, you know, water is dry and coal is fireproof. Deception in any way, matter shape, or form is a kind of wrong, but you have to do it sometimes for the greater cause to show people the truth.

So I think we struggle with ethics. I've written a whole book about it, honestly. That's what this book is about. Where are the boundaries? The boundaries are inherently subjective and inherently situational. And increasingly, people are more divided than ever on what should be exposed. Would you say that Veritas is politically impartial? Well, that's a pretty existential question in a day and age when we are divided

on facts. I think the media is monolithic. I would to quote my late and mentor Andrew Breiber, I do believe the media is part of the Democratic Democrat party, national complex, Democratic party complex. So people will come to me with information that is enathema to what is presented on TV. And that's traditionally been things that are, for example, would expose Democrats lying since CNN and the New York Times and the Washington Post are aligned with political interests. But I think increasingly that's going to be less the case, less of the case. For example, we did a story on Alex Stovle,

who's a Republican in Arizona, and I don't know if you saw this video, but he's a conservative Republican guy running in the primary in the state of Arizona as a congressman, and he said some things in his vehicle privately that contradicted what he said publicly. So publicly, he says, yes, we need to audit that election.

And then privately, he said to his his colleague who is a whistleblower and his campaign oh I don't think there was enough fraud to overturn the election I don't think he said anything wrong I happen to agree with Alex Stowell I doesn't seem to be enough voter fraud to overturn the election but it was his lack of courage to say these things publicly. And I think over time, you're going to see that asymptote of party stories approach closer to 50%. But it'll never be half and half. So long as you have all the organs of dissemination in this country completely aligned with one political party. Most whistleblowers are going to be exposing the Democratic party since that's the message that we get from tech and the mainstream media.

How many tips do you get per day? You got any idea? Hundreds. I call it the not the help line, but I tell my staff, we call the hope line. Most of these people are hopeless and cynical and want something to believe in and they reach out to us. And increasingly, the thing we hear from people is, there really isn't anywhere else for them to go. They certainly can't go to the New York Times. They probably either ignore them or burn their cover. You put out a video the other day saying,

I am not suicidal. How concerned are you for your personal safety? Well, I think that's another existential question. The first page of this book addresses this question. People say, do you fear for your life? And it doesn't matter how I answer that in the negative or affirmative, either I will sound prideful or self-angrientizing or naive. If I say I fear for my life, you'll think I'm full of myself. If I say I don't, you'll think I'm naive. So I don't know how to, and that

was that video was my form of answering that question. I was like, you half the comments, are you afraid? First of all, no. I'm not afraid for my life. If I was afraid know how to, and that was, that video was my form of answering that question. I was like, you half the comments, are you afraid? First of all, no. I'm not afraid for my life. If I was afraid for my life, I sure as shit wouldn't have started Project Veritas. I did not realize how serious this was until April of this year when I was banned from Twitter.

What was the story of that? That was the day. If there was one moment in time, it wasn't my incarceration, it wasn't my, you know, it was that day when they banned me from Twitter for quoting CNN, Charlie Chester saying that we're propaganda and Twitter.

That's when I realized whoa that was my why what ill black pill red pill up pill down pill I don't know what that you know what but the metaphor but because I had quoted the control room director at CNN saying what we all suspect and they banned me for it I never never thought we'd cross that Rubicon. Of course, they made up some weird excuse like I'd created fake accounts on Twitter, which is so defamatory. We sued them for defamation and that matters ongoing.

But for me, it was like, I guess there is an innocence. There is an idealism. There is a hope here that I feel internally and my colleagues feel there's a way the world ought to be. And we don't ascribe to the cynicism. For me it was like, oh, they're not going to ban me for that. I'm just reporting on what this guy's saying.

And they didn't ban him. By the way, I'm quoting this guy. They should be banning the guy I'm quoting, not me. So for me it was like, oh, okay. Now things are about to get real. And that's when I sort of woke up from my idealism, just a little bit. I'm still very idealistic.

And then the FBI raids, that was, then it got to Defcon one. It was like, okay, now they're raiding my home and taking my shit and putting a journalist in handcuffs. Again, I didn't think that would happen. I don't want to live in a world where that can happen. I reject the premise that I do live in that world. So I put the video out, you speak of,

because half the comments say I should fear for my life. And I said, well, I'm not suicidal. I love my life. I'm blessed to do what I do. And it's all going to be okay. How often do you spend, or how long, typically during a day, do you spend talking to legal council? Oh, constantly.

There's just a guy that's on your right shoulder for the entirety of the day. Something comes up. You ask John a question. John tells you the answer. Something to that effect. It's something. We have many lawyers, some of them are in a house, many of them are out of house. I could effectively pass the bar exam at this point.

I myself went to law school for your dropped out, been deposed many times, been to court many times, we've never lost a case. Everything we do is run by lawyers. You have issues of consent, you have issues of privacy, torsuous interference, you have non-disclosure agreements. We, we, this case, Bart Nicky Vivop, or I effectively have the whole thing memorized. It's just, the thing about law is that we live in a nation of laws.

And one of the great things about the United States of America, in the American founding, is this idea that we are equal. We are all created equal. What does that mean? Well, it does not mean that I run as fast as you or I cook as good as you. It means we're equal before the law. This is a beautiful thing in the courts. Some of the most amazing moments of my life have been winning in court.

There was a moment in the Shirley Teeter case where it went to jury verdict. And when people make these sort of irrational rhetorical arguments you see on cable news, all that stuff melts away in court. That doesn't matter anymore. It's all about logic and truth. And you get to the point in the lawsuit when the judge is like, where's the edit, counselor? Well, he mixed this moment over here and he's like, yeah,

but that's what journalists do. They tell stories and that's what Oki was supposed to do. But Oki did not opine on Scott Fobel's statements and the judge goes, why would question the ethics of James Oki if he did opine on Scott Fobel? And it was so beautiful because every now and then, once in a while, when you're in court, you actually see the administration of justice. It's very rare, but it does happen. In that case, we hired a lawyer who happens to be blind. The woman who sued me, her name was Shirley Teeter.

She was a disabled woman. She had COPD. She had an oxygen tank, undoubtedly, to engender sympathy with the jury. So we had some tricks up our sleeve. We brought a lawyer in court who was literally blind and he had a cane and you know, he listened to the transcripts through his headphones. I could tell you a story after story about litigation and about the law, but clearly it surrounds us always.

We follow the law. We never break the law, and we are a proponents and adherents to the first amendment. As the scrutiny increases with Project Veritas, the fallout, if you guys were rumbled to have broken the law or to have stepped across the line, that's going to become increasingly tight, right? There's going to be more eyes, more scrutiny. Is this something that you're conscious of? Is this something where you think, as you continue to grow the platform, there's more restrictions, it's more laborious, more effortful to get yourself to the stage where you can release things. Is this something that you attention that you feel? It's my cross to bear bear is how I put it.

I tell my staff that we have, we have an ethics policy at Veritas. And here's the most important ethical guideline. Always behave like there's a jury in the room watching everything you do and say, even when you're alone. And people say, I don't wanna live in that world. And I say, that is the world that we live in. So as long as you behave like a jury is always watching,

like you're in a goldfish ball Then you're okay. Now what's terrifying is when they falsely accused you Which is what the feds did in the Ashley Biden case that they had they had I guess insinuated that I was involved in the theft I Wasn't I wasn't even aware of the thing was stolen even if it was stolen I would be protected by the United States Supreme Court to receive and or publish the document. I didn't. But yeah, I think your question, you have to behave like you're always being watched. There's a chapter in this book called Seekersy and I, again, it took me many years to learn this lesson. Many years. I've seen people try to keep secrets.

You can never keep a secret in this business. You understand we have like two national security, two Pulitzer Prize winning national security reporters at the New York Times who spend most of their time investigating me. That's not an exaggeration. Adam Goldman and Mike Schmidt at the New York Times are not investigating the FDA or the Pentagon or I don't know stuff happening in Ukraine. They're literally staked out of my sources' houses. This is a true story.

They're literally surveilling my sources, trying to dox my sources. They think that James O'Keefe and Project Baratana says what we need to investigate. So any secret I've ever had has been unearthed. And if you don't believe me, believe that I've been to court a dozen times, one every case, been deposed, and they got nothing on me. They got nothing. And if they had something, wouldn't you know about it?

So that's my cross to bear. The one area in life where I think you can keep secrets is your sexual life. I think we should avoid that area. I think we should stay out of people's bedrooms, the exception being if you're doing something to a minor, we did a story on CNN's Rick Salibi. He was soliciting pictures of a 15-year-old. You can't do that. That's against the law. As long as you don't break the law, I think we stay out of people's bedrooms. Wasn't Jake toughest producer doing something dodgy as well? That was the individual I just spoke of. I was just saying that.

I was just saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that.

I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. I was saying that. us into your point. You said, well, Chris, why would we trust prostitutes? Well, we interviewed her, former prostitute, and this woman had audio facetime calls. And we corroborated those, turns out they were real. And in these facetime calls, Rick Suleiby was soliciting

pictures of a 15-year-old girl, sexual fantasies about his fiancee's underage daughter really disturbing stuff and we thought that the interests of the 14-year-old and 15-year-old girls He spoke of or paramount because he was going to be living with this 14-year-old girl So we we blurred the man's face. We did the ethical thing We went straight to the fiance She did not like project for our toss at first, but then thanked us. The police got involved, CNN fired or he resigned, quietly by the way.

They didn't want to say anything at Jeff Zucker's network. And that's what happened there. James O'Keefe, ladies and gentlemen, American McCrecher, people can get that on Amazon. Fra, it'll be out. It'll be out by the time this is out. Yes. Where else can people go to keep up to date with what you do?

Well, all proceeds from this book go to our nonprofit, project beritas, americanmuckraker.com. You go to Amazon. It's top 10 on Amazon right now. And we're an organization. We're a charitable nonprofit news organization. We're very independent. So we encourage people to have an open mind

and to learn how to do journalism in Clown world where truth is upside down and two plus two equals five Support our work by the book. I sent us a tip at Veritas tips at protonmail.com if you're there in the United Kingdom or anywhere You are world wide and you want to speak the truth unspoken Buy this book and read about how to do it. Stay safe mate. Thank you.