Why Won’t the Project Veritas Board Resign?

 

My general understanding is that James O’Keefe, founder and (now former) president of Project Veritas, fired a recently hired executive when that executive raised criticisms about O’Keefe’s leadership. The “fired” executive then organized an effort to keep his job and brought complaints to the Board of Directors. (I’m skipping details on the two entities — 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) — that constitute PV.)

The board confronted O’Keefe and was unhappy with how the meeting went, so it “suspends” him pending an “investigation” of the “fired” executive among other complaints. The suspension then leaked onto the internet. Big donors to PV were concerned about what was happening. One big donor, whose interactions with O’Keefe were included by someone else in the “complaints,” denied the truthfulness of that complaint.

After the “investigation,” the board met with O’Keefe again. O’Keefe said either you (the board) resign,s or I do. Classic power play by the “indispensable man.” And why shouldn’t they? They backed the guy O’Keefe fired, and now at least part of the supposedly abused staff has posted a video supporting O’Keefe. So you have a broken and crippled organization. The guy that 99% of America assumes is PV has taken his ball and is offering a new contact point for tips about corruption. Your donors (those not on the Board, at least) are not opening their wallets to you.

Is the merchandise at the PV gift shop so valuable for you to hold on to? Whether you completely approved of O’Keefe’s management or not, wasn’t PV achieving what it was designed to do? Weren’t you already in 80-20 territory — whatever “improvement” you were looking for in the organization’s mission, it was going to cost too much to get it?

If your objective is to continue exposing corruption on the Left, which serves it better: having O’Keefe build again from scratch while your phones go silent, or leave and give PV back to O’Keefe? You’ve made the only point you are ever going to make: O’Keefe is a ________ (you fill in the blank), and if he doesn’t change his ways, then ________ (you fill in the blank). Is it your fiduciary obligation to stay and dismantle PV?

What part of this makes sense? The staff that didn’t stand up for O’Keefe is acting like the dispute between the Board and O’Keefe has nothing to do with them, and they will press on “leaving the door open” for O’Keefe’s return? Is that a repudiation of the board?

Why would you ever stay on the board under these circumstances?

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  1. Kevin Schulte Member
    Kevin Schulte
    @KevinSchulte

    Pfizer bucks ?  Me thinks !

    • #1
  2. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    How far will James O’Keefe’s many passionate enemies go to crush him? How far have they gone? Who are these board members, and who picked them?

    • #2
  3. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    The only regret O’Keefe’s enemies have is that he didn’t enter the Capitol on January 6.

    • #3
  4. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    I am guessing this is a consequence of knowledge bias as much as anything else. When you are in the organization you are in the organization. You lose the ability to see what’s happening from an outside perspective. Things are important to you — because you are inside –that nobody outside cares about as much as you do. And even if it feels bad to you, does anyone else thinks it’s that bad, bad enough to kill the thing you claim to love?

    • #4
  5. Susan Quinn Contributor
    Susan Quinn
    @SusanQuinn

    What a mess! It’s a shame that all of this went public. Since there are so many particulars that we lack, I’m not sure what James should do. But I hope, with all the work he put in, he can be reunited with PV and they can continue their good work.

    • #5
  6. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    Why should they?  They have won.  They now have the name, the money, the control as well as remove their nemesis 

    • #6
  7. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Why should they? They have won. They now have the name, the money, the control as well as remove their nemesis

    They may have whatever money is currently in the bank, but they’re not likely to get more, at least not from donors who were supporting O’Keefe more than Project Veritas as such.  PV was basically just his nameplate, his DBA.

    • #7
  8. The Cloaked Gaijin Member
    The Cloaked Gaijin
    @TheCloakedGaijin

    Well, they took out or bought off Matt Drudge and probably a bunch of Never-Trumper types too. 

    Rush Limbaugh, Andrew Breitbart, and P. J. O’Rourke are gone.

    We keep losing some of our best conservative fighters and humorists, and we don’t have many of them.

    • #8
  9. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    It doesn’t seem to occur to either of the board(s) that O’Keefe built this news organization from scratch into an influential news site and a quite powerful money maker as well. Now he is free to build up a new one.

    Ed Dowd, who has become semi-famous for his work on statistics relating to excess deaths in 2021, has recently opened up about his experiences at BlackRock.

    He was chastised, quite forcefully, for his talking in an angry voice  to underlings who weren’t doing their work.

    He was – and I am paraphrasing:  “I came up through organizations at a time when if you did not do your work, you were shown the door. And booted out. Now that “sensitivity training” is the guideline for how to treat people, the manager who is indignant that some employees just don’t bother to notice deadlines means that the manager gets in trouble.”

    I suspect this same philosophy of inappropriate politeness and PC all the time is part of what led the board members into ditching O’Keefe.

    Anyway one of the serious donors to PV was Candace Owen, who has come out in his defense.

    So has much of America.

    The following tweet supports O’Keefe and uses  the  language, facts and emotions that thousands of others have expressed:

    ####

    • #9
  10. Zafar Member
    Zafar
    @Zafar

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):
    I suspect this same philosophy of inappropriate politeness and PC all the time

    It’s unfortunate, jmho, that people confuse being polite with being pleasant.

    • #10
  11. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Rodin: Why would you ever stay on the Board under these circumstances?

    The only thing that will save the board (and PV if they still control it) is if leftist donors pick up the slack and continue funding.  Keep your eyes open the next few weeks . . .

    • #11
  12. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Stad (View Comment):

    Rodin: Why would you ever stay on the Board under these circumstances?

    The only thing that will save the board (and PV if they still control it) is if leftist donors pick up the slack and continue funding. Keep your eyes open the next few weeks . . .

    If leftist donors “pick up the slack” it will be because PV will be aiming to “expose” only things like Trump.

    • #12
  13. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Stad (View Comment):

    Rodin: Why would you ever stay on the Board under these circumstances?

    The only thing that will save the board (and PV if they still control it) is if leftist donors pick up the slack and continue funding. Keep your eyes open the next few weeks . . .

    The government’s recent Omnibus Spending Act of late 2022 details that 1.2 billions of dollars must be spent on helping news organizations get out important messages.

    I doubt if anyone here really thinks that O’Keefe will ever see a penny of these funds, or that should the board at Project Veritas go hat in hand to the Feds, that they won’t  see a lion’s share of distributed funding.

     

    • #13
  14. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Stad (View Comment):

    Rodin: Why would you ever stay on the Board under these circumstances?

    The only thing that will save the board (and PV if they still control it) is if leftist donors pick up the slack and continue funding. Keep your eyes open the next few weeks . . .

    The government’s recent Omnibus Spending Act of late 2022 details that 1.2 billions of dollars must be spent on helping news organizations get out important messages.

    I doubt if anyone here really thinks that O’Keefe will ever see a penny of these funds, or that should the board at Project Veritas go hat in hand to the Feds, that they won’t see a lion’s share of distributed funding.

     

    Maybe they figured they had to get rid of O’Keefe to get that filthy lucre.

    • #14
  15. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Why should they? They have won. They now have the name, the money, the control as well as remove their nemesis

    They may have whatever money is currently in the bank, but they’re not likely to get more, at least not from donors who were supporting O’Keefe more than Project Veritas as such. PV was basically just his nameplate, his DBA.

    Maybe, but now they can go to the government or other types and use their name, their  reputation, their connections and gather more money and use what info they have captured and tear down those they get paid to use it for.   It is a typical Leftist thing.  They do it to most places.   

    • #15
  16. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    Why should they? They have won. They now have the name, the money, the control as well as remove their nemesis

    They may have whatever money is currently in the bank, but they’re not likely to get more, at least not from donors who were supporting O’Keefe more than Project Veritas as such. PV was basically just his nameplate, his DBA.

    Maybe, but now they can go to the government or other types and use their name, their reputation, their connections and gather more money and use what info they have captured and tear down those they get paid to use it for. It is a typical Leftist thing. They do it to most places.

    It’s the old story.

    Identify a respected institution, gut it and wear it as a skin suit…

    • #16
  17. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board?  The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses?  This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.  

    • #17
  18. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc.  They could easily be threatened with things like “If you don’t stop supporting Trump and start supporting Biden instead, I’m taking the house, and the children, and half of your income forever!  Plus I’ll tell all your supporters that you were abusive and cheating on me!”

    • #18
  19. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    kedavis (View Comment):

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc. They could easily be threatened with things like “If you don’t stop supporting Trump and start supporting Biden instead, I’m taking the house, and the children, and half of your income forever! Plus I’ll tell all your supporters that you were abusive and cheating on me!”

    This is why it is good to marry someone more conservative than you.

    • #19
  20. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc. They could easily be threatened with things like “If you don’t stop supporting Trump and start supporting Biden instead, I’m taking the house, and the children, and half of your income forever! Plus I’ll tell all your supporters that you were abusive and cheating on me!”

    This is why it is good to marry someone more conservative than you.

    It’s a start, but are women that reliable?

    • #20
  21. DaveSchmidt Coolidge
    DaveSchmidt
    @DaveSchmidt

    kedavis (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc. They could easily be threatened with things like “If you don’t stop supporting Trump and start supporting Biden instead, I’m taking the house, and the children, and half of your income forever! Plus I’ll tell all your supporters that you were abusive and cheating on me!”

    This is why it is good to marry someone more conservative than you.

    It’s a start, but are women that reliable?

    The good ones are. 

    • #21
  22. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    OmegaPaladin (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc. They could easily be threatened with things like “If you don’t stop supporting Trump and start supporting Biden instead, I’m taking the house, and the children, and half of your income forever! Plus I’ll tell all your supporters that you were abusive and cheating on me!”

    This is why it is good to marry someone more conservative than you.

    It’s a start, but are women that reliable?

    The good ones are.

    It’s only obvious in hindsight.

    • #22
  23. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    Making him start over from scratch won’t stop him but it will neutralize him as a threat in 2024.

    • #23
  24. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Red Herring (View Comment):

    Making him start over from scratch won’t stop him but it will neutralize him as a threat in 2024.

    Not necessarily, he did some pretty important stuff even when he was starting out the first time.

    • #24
  25. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Red Herring (View Comment):

    Making him start over from scratch won’t stop him but it will neutralize him as a threat in 2024.

    Not necessarily, he did some pretty important stuff even when he was starting out the first time.

    Yes, targeted, not large scale. He can’t cover elections broadly but just targeted precincts. 

    • #25
  26. Bishop Wash Member
    Bishop Wash
    @BishopWash

    kedavis (View Comment):

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    I am curious who is on the PV (soon to be PC) Board? The members may be conservative enough, but how about spouses? This often seems to be one of the backdoors through which the loss of mission comes.

    I sometimes wonder about the spouse issue in other areas too, including previously-conservative TV/radio hosts, etc. 

    It works on the other side too. A theory is that Paul Krugman’s girlfriend either writes or heavily influences his column and that’s why he went from respected economist to nutjob. Colin Kaepernick didn’t become destructive until he got a Muslim girlfriend. 

    • #26
  27. TBA Coolidge
    TBA
    @RobtGilsdorf

    Red Herring (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Red Herring (View Comment):

    Making him start over from scratch won’t stop him but it will neutralize him as a threat in 2024.

    Not necessarily, he did some pretty important stuff even when he was starting out the first time.

    Yes, targeted, not large scale. He can’t cover elections broadly but just targeted precincts.

    I think it is possible for you to both be right. 

    Peoples Hernandez: You’re not a cop anymore.

    John Shaft: Do you think that makes me less dangerous, or more dangerous? 

    • #27
  28. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    You stay on the board because you work for Phizer and are stupid enough to think that taking out out O’Keefe will stop the organization.  

    • #28
  29. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    It doesn’t seem to occur to either of the board(s) that O’Keefe built this news organization from scratch into an influential news site and a quite powerful money maker as well. Now he is free to build up a new one.

    Ed Dowd, who has become semi-famous for his work on statistics relating to excess deaths in 2021, has recently opened up about his experiences at BlackRock.

    He was chastised, quite forcefully, for his talking in an angry voice to underlings who weren’t doing their work.

    He was – and I am paraphrasing: “I came up through organizations at a time when if you did not do your work, you were shown the door. And booted out. Now that “sensitivity training” is the guideline for how to treat people, the manager who is indignant that some employees just don’t bother to notice deadlines means that the manager gets in trouble.”

    I suspect this same philosophy of inappropriate politeness and PC all the time is part of what led the board members into ditching O’Keefe.

    Anyway one of the serious donors to PV was Candace Owen, who has come out in his defense.

    So has much of America.

    The following tweet supports O’Keefe and uses the language, facts and emotions that thousands of others have expressed:

    ####

    Nah.  He exposed Phizer and they took him out.  This has nothing to do with Cancel Culture.

    • #29
  30. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    There’s a parsimonious explanation, that these are petty people whose grandiosity is limited to maneuvering for scraps in a defined fishbowl.  As somebody said, “the reason academic infighting is so bitter is that the rewards are so small.”

    There’s nothing like boredom in a bureaucracy to usher in an age of bloodletting.  I think it’s a big part of why COVID metastasized into a clearly harmful knee-jerk tyranny.

    • #30
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