TRIGGERnometry - Project Veritas: "We Expose Corruption, Lies and Abuse"

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

James O’Keefe, founder and CEO Project Veritas, joins us. See their work at https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasvisuals/featured Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/​​​ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/​​​ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod​​​ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod​​​ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most recently, our revelations inside Twitter, the Twitter executive stated that their culture at Twitter is, quote, kami as fuck. This is what he said, quote, Twitter does not believe in free speech. Our jobs are at stake. Elon Musk's a capitalist, and we weren't really operating as capitalists more like very socialist. Like, we're all like, kami as fuck. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kisson.

And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is the founder of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe. Welcome to Trigonometry. Great to be with you. Listen, man, you do very interesting work. And before we get into that, I would just love to know a little bit more about who you are. What's your background? What's made you do the work that you do?

Tell us who you are. My name is James O'Keefe. I run an organization called Project Beritas with the motto, Be Brave Do Something. I'm in my office right now in Westchester, New York. We run a nationwide undercover investigative journalism organization. We've been doing this for about, well, since I was 19 years old. And we have dozens of undercover roaming journalists that were hidden cameras to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. Our most recent story was the Twitter.

one featuring the two Twitter executives, engineers on tape, disparaging Elon Musk, calling him Asperger's and special needs and talking about how they're commie AF, their communists at Twitter. We've done stories on voter fraud, government corruption, prosecutorial abuse. We've sued the New York Times for defamation and gotten past motion to dismiss. That's interesting given the recent Johnny Depp revelations of the actual malice standard. I've been incarcerated, I've been jailed, I've been raided, I'm the only journalist in American history running a press organization to be rated by the FBI over Ashley Biden's diary reporting on that. So Veritas is kind of the tip of the sphere. We represent an organization that goes undercover, but also represents whistleblowers when the inside of these organizations that come forward because we believe that in order to expose what's happening, we need to equip.

people to do that. So lots to talk about. We've done hundreds of investigations and the floor is yours. Well, James, the one thing I was going to ask you to start off with is I came across your content a couple of years ago and I just saw that what you do is you get people to talk to get people to talk about themselves on a hidden camera. So you get to hear from the horse's mouth. Yet when I go on your Wikipedia page it says you're a far right organization that deceptively edits videos. And I'm like, How do we square those two different visions? That's assuming Wikipedia has any credibility. I mean, it doesn't necessarily mean anything or, you know,

Wikipedia is good for researching, you know, rhinoceros in, you know, Africa, but not necessarily good for politics, you know, because oftentimes these are the problems. Just like anything else we've done, it's the New York Times, Washington Post, the powers that be Google, bias that's inherent. You know, it's a funny thing about anecdote about Wikipedia.

At Veritas, we've never actually lost a lawsuit, which is an extraordinary victory for us. Contrash that to an organization like CNN of the Washington Post that constantly settle lawsuits. And they accuse me of being a liar. So our attorneys went to Wikipedia and tried to get cited. Well, all these lawsuits that we've won, Wikipedia's moderated. told us that legal documents are not credible sources. Legal documents.

So a federal judge giving us all these victories in court saying we don't selectively edit videos or do anything improper, according to Wikipedia, those are not credible sources. So what you have is the era of what we call it, Project Veritas, George Orwell's, double think, because they will cite one lawsuit there on Wikipedia, but ignore all the other victories and that's why Wikipedia is not credible. And James, so you talk about bias and you've done investigations, as you're saying, to all sorts of things.

What is it that you're trying to show the world? The reality. I think we're trying to show the world for what it actually is, you know, and unfiltered. And what have you found that to be? Well, I mean, it's circumstantial. I mean, it depends upon what you're asking.

asking about, but generally speaking, things are, you know, as the late Mike Wallace said, and I wrote about this in my recent book, American Mockbreaker, things are rarely as they seem and seldom as they ought to be. So people say, what motivates me? Well, when you're growing up and you're watching local media and you're seeing things are rarely as they seem and seldom as they should be. And oftentimes people debate facts. In other words, you know, know, does two plus two equal four or two plus two equals five? And that's the tragedy in America right now is that we don't agree on facts. But there is only one set of facts. You're not entitled to two different realities. So oftentimes we record these people saying these things. For example,

the Pfizer executive. And I'm not even sure I'm allowed to say this on your show or Twitter or anywhere else. But it is a fact that a Pfizer engineer, biochemist at Pfizer, said that the vac that the um if you've had covid it's more effective uh than their own vaccine the antibodies are more effective this is coming out of the mouth of a Pfizer scientist so for for me to report that I get censored why am I being censored don't kill the messenger I'm just I'm just reporting which is my duty what the people inside a pharmaceutical company are saying that's the tragedy that we're that were that were faced with at project veritas and most people Most people don't do this because it's too hard. You know, you get sued, you get attacked, you get censored. It's expensive. Investigative journalism is hard because the problem we found is that media companies often give you the information that the people in the government want you to know. They give you sanctioned information. And what you really ought to do is give people the unsanctioned information. You have to go against the consent of the government and also.

go give the information that's not permissible for you to give. And when you take that route, it's very difficult. It's very, very taxing. And oftentimes it leads to things that we had to deal with, like the FBI coming after us, which is truly an extraordinary development. James, how do you pick your stories? Why do you go after certain stories and maybe just disregard others or think that others aren't as important?

How do you do your editorial? Well, oftentimes our stories pick us. Our stories choose us. This is something that most people don't understand because people are very political, right? So most people are out there opining. Most content you consume on Instagram, it's all people's conjecture. It's all people talking, what they think. But what Project Gerasas and what investigative reporting does is sources come to us with information.

We try to corroborate it. People trust us. They trust us because of what we've been through. We had a source come to us recently within the FBI, a whistleblower. I did not seek that person out. That person sought us out. We get thousands of tips a day, hundreds of DMs a day, and that source inside the FBI came to us with a document

showing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation labeled us as news media on their internal computer systems. This was a direct contradiction to what the prosecutors said, we're not a journalist, they said in New York. So this whistleblower, this person with a conscience inside the Bureau felt the public should see this information. This is a restricted document. You could say even perhaps classified document that very few people had access to and brought that to us. I did not seek that out. In the beginning of my career, I indeed did seek out. I did infiltrate, went undercover.

I went in as a pimp into acorn. I walked in the door, you know, pretending to be a pimp with a young girl that I said was my prostitute. Obviously, in the beginning, I kind of went out there. And in the beginning, I chose subjects that were sacred cows. That means to say organizations that the media refuse to investigate. Planned parenthood is a great example of an organization that, well, you shouldn't investigate them because they, do good work. I said, well, okay, well, they could do good work, but you should also investigate them because they get whatever billion dollars of federal money. So everything deserves scrutiny,

particularly groups that are powerful and have a lot of money. And James, let's be honest, everybody has bias. We have bias. Every media organization has bias. Do you think that Project Veritas has a bias? And if it is, would you say it's right-leaning at all? Well, I think we have less biased than anybody else because we don't color what we show you. It's literally people's lips moving. You can't get less biased than that. I mean, the only argument you can make is why don't you investigate all the things? Well, that's kind of a non sequitur, though, isn't it?

Because, I mean, no journalist investigates all the things. I mean, some of the most award-winning journalist in American history, like think of Seymour Hirsch. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his, rightfully so, for his exposure of the Vietnam massacre with the United States Army killing innocent people. But he focused on that one thing, didn't he? Nobody criticized him for that. So, no, I mean, yes, it's what you choose to focus on, really is your point. The question behind your question is, why do you focus in one direction? But Baratatat does a lot of different things.

And we investigated a Republican politician in Arizona most recently in December. Stovall was his name. And he was saying things in his automobile to his colleague that he was saying directly contradicted his public policy stances. And as Veritas grows, you'll see us do a lot more stories. But the question behind your question is, you know, why do you, you seem more conservative? Listen, I mean, you'll generally have sources come to us with corruption in the government. And people say, well, left wing, right wing. Well, since when is the FBI left wing?

CNN left wing is the New York Times left wing? Our pharmaceutical companies left wing. If so, when did that happen? And what's your definition of left? So we really have taken for, we have to revisit these definitions of both ideology and public policy as we as Veritas grows. And James, you talk about holding people with power to account and investigating them. I think one of the things that we would definitely all agree on is the tremendous power, the social media and big tech companies currently have.

And you've done a lot of work to expose some of the biases inherent in those companies. Most recently, you mentioned Twitter. What is your perception? We talk about, you know, Big Pharma being or not being left wing. Do you think that the big tech companies have a political bias or some other kind of bias? What do you think is going on there? Well, most recently our revelations inside Twitter, the Twitter executive stated that their culture at Twitter is, quote, kami as fuck. This is what he said.

We asked him what he meant by that. And he said, quote, Twitter does not believe in free speech. This is his word. So you're asking me what I think. I'm only going to quote the people that work at Twitter currently. And by the way, that's what makes me less biased than anybody else you've ever seen. spoken to. Here's what he said, quote, Twitter does not believe in free speech. Our jobs are at stake. Elon Musk's a capitalist, and we weren't really operating as capitalists more like very socialist,

like we're all like kami as fuck. I don't know if two parties can truly coexist on one platform. So this is what this man is saying at Twitter. His name is Siru Murugussin. He's a Twitter senior engineer. And he says many of his colleagues have voiced that it would be their last day at Twitter when Elon Musk takes over the company. So clearly, based upon his own remarks, he's describing the internal culture, a very zealous ideological culture at Twitter. And James, by the way, I grew up in the Soviet Union. I'm not on board with any of this year. The reason I'm asking you what you think is I mainly was asking what have you found based on your investigations because while I follow you and your content, I haven't seen every bit

of content that you've produced. So I guess what I'm asking is, beyond that one interaction with this particular person, what have you found as a broader theme in terms of these big tech companies? More like what he said. And there's a kind of problem is that, you know, in going back to my Pfizer example, it's my duty to report what these people are saying. And when you're censored for doing that, it creates a real catch-22. Because in the case of Pfizer, people say, are you pro or anti-vaccine? It doesn't really matter what my opinion is on that. I don't really have one.

I'm not a scientist. I don't have enough information really to even tell you what I think. But when Pfizer's number three or number four positions, in Washington, D.C., Vanessa Gelman was her name, and she was a top executive in the company, and she's saying in emails, we've got to hide information from our customers. We can't tell our customers that we use fetal cells in the development process of our vaccines. I have a responsibility to republish that information and to report it, especially if it's a secret. If they want to keep a secret from their customers, it's my duty to report that.

And Instagram removed our people's ability to tag Project Veritas and myself. That means you cannot tag us on Instagram. And there's a little box that shows up that says we've spread misinformation about COVID. And again, my question to these companies is, and by the way, I'm a very litigious individual. I like to sue. I like to defeat people who do sue me. We've never lost a case. So my question for these, by the way, I can't sue Instagram and Twitter.

under this rule because of a federal law that shields these companies from immunity. I'm certainly not shielded from immunity when I make statements about people. But my question, and this is a rhetorical one because the answer we know is, what is misinformation about publishing an email from Pfizer's executive saying they wanna hide information from people?

That's my responsibility, okay? So what you have is a twisted vortex which disincentivizes people, from doing the right thing. It disincentivizes journalists from reporting truths unspoken. Because when you do report the information that you're supposed to report, you get punished in the worst way in the 21st century to punish someone is to de-platform them. And that's why, and that's really why we have the problems that we have. You know, when a advisor executive says, don't tell anybody this.

What's the first thing going through my mind is I want to publish that information and I'm censored for it. That answers your question about the problem in big tech companies and the problem overall. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, Ultra concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the euphoria elixir collection by Calvin Klein.

Hey, Constantine, do you want better mental health? I'm from Russia. We don't have mental health. So how do you deal with mental health? You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear. If you live, you feel better. If you die, you're not real men. What about the bear's feelings? It's Russian bear. It has no feelings. People don't always realize that physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding,

and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress. And let's not forget about doom scrolling, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much, under-eating and overeating. Sleeping too much, under-eating. This is Western disease. Therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate and focus. It's really important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the tricky issues that you're struggling to deal with.

Therapy has played a really important role in helping me to deal with my ADHD and become better in all areas of my life. Why is he telling them how weak he is? Drink vodka, feel better. Better help is customize online therapy that offers video, phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist.

So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. Trigonometry funds get 10% of their first month at Betahelp.com forward slash trigger, especially if they're not real man. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P dot com slash trigger. And James, why is it that mainstream media don't cover these particular topics? Why is it left to an organization like yours that started relatively recently? Why don't we get the big publications, the big channels reporting on this? This is public interest, surely.

I would refer your audience to my book American Muckraker, which is probably the most comprehensive modern essays on the question you just asked is the entire subject of my book. But in short, in a nutshell, you know, the press acts in a symbiotic, in a symbiotic relationship with these people in proximity to power. through what Noam Chomsky referred to as a reciprocity of mutual interest. So what does that all mean? It means that they get the information from the people in these companies.

So to burn those relationships by publishing the truth, by publishing the unsanctioned info, would be the bite the hand that feeds them. So they can't do that. Second, what I said a moment ago is that, you know, if they publish the email Now, from Vanessa Gellman, the ideological community and the tech companies would censor their information. So the easiest thing to do is to go with the grain, to not be censored. And there's sort of this sort of mutual reciprocity that exists in the government.

I mean, think about it. Do you know any other, do you know any investigative reporters who are looking into these three-letter agencies in the federal government? Is anybody doing anything? And finally, another reason is nothing ever happens to these people. That's another thing you hear from everyone, every comment you ever see. There's no one's ever held accountable. So there's no, there's no fruit in it.

There's no reward in it. In fact, the first chapter of my book is called suffering. You might say, well, why will you write a journalism book? And first chapter be suffering. because you kind of have to like pain. You have to be a masochist to do what we do. There's no reward in it. So there's many other things to talk about there,

but that's kind of an overview. And, James, we often hear people say that the media is at its lowest point. Faith in the media is at its lowest point. Is it because the media is worse or is it just because we're more aware of what the media does and how they manipulate information? Is the media worse than it used to be?

The answer is yes. There's a, there's a, it's always happened, just like FBI, J. Ed Gouh Hoover existed years ago and would use dirt on people. But I think it's gotten worse because of the consolidation of the big tech companies. And most of the profits that go to, most of the information disseminated by the powers that be, the New York Times, CBS News are on Google and Twitter. Twitter and Instagram. That's where people see the information. There's also fewer newspapers than there used to be, fewer local journalism than there used to be. There's very few reporters on, quote-unquote,

investigative journalism. And it's New York Times or Washington Post, and that's about it in the United States. That just wasn't the case in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. I mean, you had organizations like the Chicago Sun-Times, which did intrepid undercover work at local bars, catching city inspectors, bribing people. You just don't see that. You just don't. And you had a lot of other undercover investigative exposés in the 80s and 90s like Mike Wallace and Primetime Live and Diane Sawyer catching grocery store people and rotting meat. But that created lawsuits. ABC News got sued by Food Lion Grocery and it cost seven figures, million dollars plus to defend.

And the for-profit corporations of America that run the newsroom said, to hell with this, I'm not going to get sued and litigate all this. So most people just go along to get along and do what's in the best interest. And finally, in modern times, you have Good Morning America, which it feels like I'm being sold comic book characters and Disney movies. I'm not really getting a bunch of gobbly gook in the morning. I'm not really seeing any intrepid truth to power muckraking. that you used to see.

And James, you use the word censorship a lot to describe what's happened to you by the social media company. So let's deal in specifics. What do you mean by censorship? Yeah, we've been banned from Twitter. Project Veritas has banned on Twitter right after we quoted CNN's Charlie Chester saying that their propaganda, his words, not mine. I don't know why Twitter banned us.

Perhaps they should be banning the man saying what he said. I'm banned on Twitter. Project Veritas is banned on Twitter. You can't tag us on Instagram, which has been an enormous wound to us. We were gaining tens of thousands of followers a month. We haven't gained any followers in six months. So clearly, you know, that's the cause of that. The social media is the main distribution mechanism for everyone.

Twitter is the main modern town square. The alternative platforms to have a fraction of a percent of, reach as those and all the major news organizations get their news organization information out through Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And that is the problem in modern society. You have a complete consolidation of information. And that is the censorship we speak of. Yeah. And that's really awful, because that's how I kind of initially came across your stuff. And to see that your band for quoting other people, I think it's insane. Whether people agree with what you do or not, It's just in a free society that shouldn't happen.

James, what has been the most shocking thing that you've discovered in the course of your investigations for you personally? Many things. Top of my mind, the FBI executing a search warrant against a press organization was unbelievable. Oftentimes it's the reactions to our work that are more shocking than the actual revelations. I mean, I could list, it would take me 30 minutes to list all the different things. those things don't really shock me. They sort of confirm suspicions. We all, anything you suspect, it's probably the case, right? People do corrupt acts. They, they lie, they cheat, they steal. In fact, one guy, Chris Jackson, Colorado, who is a progressive political activist,

white, we have to lie, cheat, and steal to win this election. Remarkably, nobody reported on it. So it's almost like the reaction to what we do is 10 times more shocking to what we do. I mean, I mean, in no particular order. Twitter story, I asked the guy who said mocking Elon Musk's Asperger's, he says he's special needs. We can't take him seriously because he's special needs. I asked him when he meant by that and he started running away from me. Hi, Alex. I'm James O'Keefe with Project Veritas.

Oh, my God. And you are on hidden camera talking about Elon Musk. Okay. And you say that he is special needs and he's, quote, going to say some crazy shit because he's special needs. You also are, yep, you're also on tape. Why is it funny? Well, no, I'm just like, you're literally just trying to, like, capture me in the middle of my own dinner. Yes.

Well, this is what you said to one of our journalists. you said, quote, your special needs, you're literally special needs. I don't even take what you're saying seriously because you're special needs. That's not true. Would you like to see you saying that? Because, Ken, don't you also see his piece of love? How can't we just all love each other? Have you seen his other tweets where he's like, I'm like, you're special needs?

You're literally special needs. Literally, though, you really are. So I can't even take what you're saying serious because you're special. No, I'm good though, but this is... Which part is... ...inappropriate while I'm trying to finish having my dinner. Well, I think... Is it appropriate to mock special needs people?

No, absolutely not. Are you... Are you saying that you... We're a... We're a... We're journalists. This is what the First Amendment. I know that you don't believe in the First Amendment. I'm gonna just finish my dinner, so...

They're hugging them. Oh, there he is. Oh, there go. Oh, there go. Oh, there go. Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Remembering.

I want to take a jog? Why are you running? Why are you running away from us? Sir, why are you running? We're jogging here with a Twitter executive on the streets of New York City, who's literally gone in an all-out sprint. You shared an email with us.

Why are you covering your face? Well, you already talked to us. You shared an email with us here, where you said, it said, don't disclose confidential information. Do you understand the irony? You're literally disclosing an email. It says, here's the email. Team, groups like Project Veritas are active right now.

Right? Excuse me. Sir, what is Elon Musk going to do when he sees this? I don't know. He ran down the street. I don't know if you saw this. He ran down the street of New York City and into every business he ran to try to hide from me. But each owner of each of those businesses on the upper way,

side of New York City came out and expressed support for Project Veritas, which is itself insanely shocking because it's New York City and one would think that nobody likes us there. Apparently everyone does. So you can't, the FBI rating on my home, the prosecutors in New York have said that I'm quote, not a journalist. And the judge asked them why. And the prosecutor said, your honor, James O'Keefe is not a journalist because he does not get permission and consent from the subjects he reports on. That was maybe the most shocking thing I've ever heard said in my entire life. Obviously, the definition of a journalist is to publish that which others don't want published. So for line prosecutors in the United States of America to be telling judges that we're

not journalists because we don't get cooperation and permission from the fraudsters we report on, that was shocking. That was a wake up call for me to have FBI agents point. guns at me in my apartment, put me in handcuffs and take my phones and notebooks, that should be a shock to everyone. It was a shock to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is considered a more liberal left-leaning organization, but even they were like, whoa. So, I mean, I could go on for 30 minutes listing all the shocking things that have happened. I think the problem in modern society, it's actually very hard to shock anybody these days. 20 years ago, everyone would be shocked by everything that happens to us. But these days, people sort of shrug their shoulders.

And I think that the tragedy right now we have is that it's all about hurting the other guy. Everyone is on the team. And it's all about hurting the other team. So people view that through that lens. Information is less powerful. And the images are less powerful than they used to be. And I think the new currency, the new rarity, is going to be courage. And that's why our motto is be brave because we want these whistleblowers to come forward and show the world that they're going to have to give up their jobs and their livelihoods to bring these truths to the public. But you must be heartened, James, the reaction that your work gets,

the number of people who engage with it, the people who enjoy your content, and feel that it has real value. Oh, I'm an optimist. I think we're going to win. I just think it's incredibly painful. And that's why I call the first chapter of my book suffering. Because we need people to actually do what I do. I mean, I need people to follow. I mean, I can do it. My undercover journalist, but what the FBI whistleblower do was incredibly hardening. In fact, the most heartening thing I've ever seen was the FBI whistleblower. I cannot obviously tell you who this was. But we interviewed it. them in the shadows, this person actually brought me a secret document from my case that said on news media, which contradicts what the prosecutor said. And this person said to me the following statement. They said, I said, why are people doing all this stuff in the government and going along with it? And he said, because they want the paycheck and they want the pension. And he said, the paycheck and the pension, that mentality will eventually lead to the Holocaust.

And he said that when FBI training, they actually go to the Holocaust Museum. They go to the Martin Luther King Memorial for a day to remind the agents, don't do this stuff, guys. But it's just like Jordan Peterson says, inch by inch, they push the goalpost, inch by inch. Now they're pointing guns at journalists in the United States of America. that. And I'm not, I'm confident that we must win. In my case, I have to win. If I don't win this case with the FBI in New York, don't raid a journalist's home and take their stuff because you don't like what they're doing. If I lose that, it's game over. Countries, it's over. There's no, what other rubicon do you want to

cross? You can't take away the First Amendment like that. You can't, you government agents can't raid journalists' homes and take their notebooks to find out what sources. they're talking to. When you cross that Rubicon, it's the end. It's the end of Western civilization. So I do believe I'm optimistic. I'm confident that I will win this case. Right now, our motion to get our stuff back is on the judge's desk, and she has to rule on that. And if she rules against us, I can appeal that to the Supreme Court in the United States. But even then, look what's happening with our Supreme Court. People are questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court based upon what political party appoints the judges. So there's a lot,

there's a lot at stake here. And there's a lot on the line. So I'm optimistic, but I understand it's trench warfare. Yeah. And James, you talk about all these Rubikons being crossed, and I completely agree with you. I don't think the law enforcement should be harassing journalists in the way that they have been. Not just in your case, we have similar situations happening here in the UK as well. Do you think that's happening for the reason that you mentioned earlier, which is everything is about Team Red, Team Blue? And if it's the other, if you think it's the other team that's doing this, then no laws can be, can be upheld. You just do what you do what you need to do, as opposed to what the Constitution says or what the law say. Yes, precisely. You said it

better than I could. It's all about whose team you're on and whose ox you're perceived to be goring. There's no, there's no semblance of, of justice or, or logic or principle. Glenn Greenwald wrote a great article about this, the death of principle. You mentioned one, I think it's one of your guardian reporters in the UK is getting secret warrants. There's just, it's all about like good off with his head. This is this, this is the sentiment you hear guillotine James O'Keefe, right? Like, put him in jail. In fact, most people want to incarcerate the people that are politically opposed. to them. I hear this all the time. Why aren't they in jail? Well, they're saying that about me. Why isn't O'Keeffe in jail? Let's jail everyone who disagrees with us. And clearly that's not,

it's not, that's, that's, that's a recipe for, for civil war and, and, and much worse than that. There just, there just is no logic anymore. There's no principle. It, that's why I was so heartened to see the ACLU come to our defense. I was heartened to see, uh, the reporters committee come to our defense in these cases because there are certain fundamental principles here at stake that we all have to unite behind. And maybe that is the mission of Project Veritas after all, which is to find the areas of consensus in society. And whatever that narrowing, you know, Venn diagram is where we all agree that this is wrong.

This is unconscionable. There's a great book called The Custodians of Conscience, which I cite in American Muckra, that we test and affirm what is and what is not an outrage to 85% of people. Is there anything that we're still united on? Of course there is. Of course there is. That's narrowing. But if we lose that consensus in American society, we're in trouble.

And that is the role of a journalist ultimately is to create that consensus. And sometimes they have to push too far like they did with the FBI raid for people like, whoa. people on the left, like, I don't want that to happen to me under Donald Trump or DeSantis. I don't want them to point guns at me and take my notebooks. So I have to defend Project Veritas. Yeah. James, it has been an absolutely wonderful interview. We could have spoken for a double trip all the time.

It's been... Yeah, we know you're busy, guys, so we've got to let you go. So we'll ask you our final question, which is always the same. And then we'll do a couple of questions for our local supporters. So go for it. Yeah. So our final question is, what's a... one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? That's a great question. I think you stumped

me this morning. What's one thing that you're not talking about? We are not as a society more broadly. Are you talking globally or American? Yeah. Well, the West. The West. I think this issue of what we, I think I'm, you know, I'm biased to what to what I've said here on this program. I think it's this notion of equality before the law. That would be my main driving impetus that maybe even was the origin story of this company that I founded was a quality before the law that we need to be treating people equal before the law and not what team they're on. And there needs to be more, there have been some conversations about that.

But I'm very, I'm concerned about the lack of people's even thinking about that concept. It's all about hurting the other team, which is a political discourse. So I want to hear more discussion about certain principles. And I point again back to the Glenn Greenwald column that he wrote about our very case and about Ed Snowden, about Julian Assange. There needs to be many more conversations about equality before the law, in my opinion. And James, thank you so much for coming on the show. Ironically enough, if people want to find you online, where is the best place to do that?

Or banned on Twitter. but you can you can find us on instagram we're censored there you can't tag us on instagram your audience will say did you know that you can't be tagged yes i know that we're well aware we get 100 messages a people telling us that you know that you can't be tagged it's hurt us immensely but you can download something called telegram it's an app and you can follow us on on telegram and you can download our clips which are only a minute long and you can upload them into your twitter and Instagram. And that's what we have done in Twitter. The story we did on Twitter, 20 million views on Twitter, which is most watched video in Project Gertas history two weeks

ago. And you also have a YouTube channel, of course. James, don't go anywhere. We're going to ask you a couple of questions for our audience. But for the moment, thank you so much for coming on. And thank you guys for watching and listening. We'll see you very soon. Another brilliant episode like this one or also. All of them go out at 7 p.m. UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. Would you consider doing undercover work targeting special interest groups, lobbyists, law enforcement, and politicians around DC? This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific

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