On Monday, James O’Keefe left the investigative journalism organization Project Veritas that he founded, citing ongoing tensions between him and the board of directors.
It is unclear whether O’Keefe was fired or quit. Initially, it was reported that O’Keefe had resigned from the position. A Twitter post by Neil McCabe, a former Project Veritas spokesman who is now employed by One America News Network, stated that O’Keefe “read his resignation letter to his former team and board members at their Mamaroneck, N.Y. headquarters” on Monday morning. However, R.C. Maxwell, a Project Veritas spokesman, responded in a retweet that that was inaccurate, and that O’Keefe had been “removed from his position as CEO by the Project Veritas board.”
“I need to make clear I have not resigned from the company, Project Veritas, I founded 13 years ago. I was stripped of my position as CEO and Chairman,” posted O’Keefe and attached a 44-minute video of his farewell address to the team.
After describing the Project Veritas achievements under his helm, the journalist said that he “wasn’t done” exposing corruption and wrongdoings. “Our mission continues on,” he said. “I’m not done. The mission will perhaps take on a new name, and it may no longer be called Project Veritas.”
O’Keefe said in the speech that he has “no job at Project Veritas” and “no position based on what the board has done.” He disclosed that he wrote to the board on February 16, requesting that its members resign by the end of that week, and if they did not, he would be “forced to walk away.” The request was not met.
Project Veritas put out a statement saying that O’Keefe was not fired, but “decided to remove his belongings” from the organization on the eve of the board meeting set to discuss “staff retention and morale” and the “company’s financial health.”
The first item of the alleged agenda refers to the internal memo signed by 16 Project Veritas employees complaining of O’Keefe’s unethical and “outright cruel” managerial style. Reported on by The Daily Beast, the memo shared with the board described O’Keefe’s turning into a “power-hungry tyrant” who “publicly humiliated” and otherwise abused his subordinates on numerous occasions.
The second item refers to O’Keefe’s alleged mishandling of donor funds. “A preliminary review at this time indicates that James has spent an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries,” according to the statement.
All of the organization’s attempts to discuss the matters with O’Keefe during the past two weeks were “ignored,” they noted.
New York Magazine’s Intelligencer reported,
“Whatever the truth of the messy circumstances, O’Keefe has left the organization after a two-week period of turmoil. During that time, Project Veritas has been divided between a group of O’Keefe loyalists and a large group of dissenters on the staff and board who chafed at the founder’s erratic management style, spending, and penchant for costly confrontation with ideological adversaries and his own employees.”
O’Keefe was placed on paid leave on February 6. The news sparked an outrage among O’Keefe’s large number of supporters on social media, many of whom expressed the sentiment that “James IS Project Veritas.” Within 48 hours of the story breaking, the organization lost more than 22,000 Twitter followers and over 10,000 YouTube subscribers. Many speculated that the organization had been compromised by the bad actors exposed by James and expressed doubts about Project Veritas’ future.
A week earlier, Project Veritas had posted a bombshell expose on one of Pfizer’s research directors revealing that the pharmaceutical giant was manipulating the Covid virus to sell updated vaccines. The timing of the two events made some pundits wonder if they were connected.
Neither Project Veritas nor James O’Keefe returned The New American’s requests for comment.
