Inside the Rise and Fall of Project Veritas

James O’Keefe helped transform U.S. conservatism into a war machine — then it all imploded

This article is available on Rolling Stone

Twitter lead client partner Alex Martinez had already gone on a handful of dates with Bobby Harr when, over drinks at a cute French restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Martinez found himself venting about Elon Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform. Musk’s attitude toward disinformation concerned him. “People don’t know how to make a rational decision if you don’t put out correct things that are supposed to be out in the public,” he told Harr. And Martinez found Musk himself off-putting. “You’re literally special needs,” Martinez said to an imaginary Musk.

The next week, Martinez was eating alone at a different restaurant when Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe slid into his booth and began to read those exact words back to him. It turned out Harr had been a Project Veritas “undercover journalist” who’d secretly recorded all of their conversations and planned to publish parts of them. “Is it appropriate to mock special-­needs people?” O’Keefe asked a stunned Martinez…

…One year later, O’Keefe would no longer be with the company he founded and many of those cheering employees would despise him. The Project Veritas founder either left or was pushed out of his own company last year, depending on whom you ask — a fittingly explosive end to a roller coaster of a run.

Over O’Keefe’s 13 years, Project Veritas helped transform American conservatism from a political movement into a war machine. It attacked the Fake News Media before Trump gave it a name, filmed the swamp before he promised to drain it. The group worked tirelessly to reveal the secret sin it believes lies at the heart of liberal institutions and prove that its political opponents are hypocrites willing to lie, cheat, and steal to destroy democracy. We are all living in the world of information warfare and idol worship that Project Veritas helped create — before it imploded.

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