The True Story of the Implosion of Project Veritas, Part 1: James O'Keefe Burns It Down
An inside view into what really happened
If you value my work, please consider an $8/month or $80/year subscription. I’m funded entirely by you.
If you can’t financially support my efforts, please consider sharing my work with your friends and family to spread the message. I can’t do it without you.
I’ve covered the tragic implosion of Project Veritas on my YouTube channel since it began in early 2023 . I was interested in the story for several reasons:
Project Veritas has produced some of the most unique and impactful investigative journalism in the space. The loss of that journalism will leave a hole that will not be easily filled.
I’m an industrial/organizational psychologist by trade, studied narcissism and workplace bullying for a long time, and consulted with organizations around the country on the topic. It’s wonky, but the inner workings of organizations interest me, particularly when those organizations are run by corrupt leadership, toxic leadership.
However, here’s what I didn’t expect when I analyzed the story on my channel: I was the only person to get it right. I know that because I’ve spoken to more than two dozen people who were employed by Project Veritas when all this happened who confirmed the timeline I laid out in this video. They contacted me because I was the only person to get it right.
No other journalist, pundit, or commentator discussing the story publicly for clicks, clout, and cash bothered to reach out to the people involved to get their side of it.
The real journalists at Project Veritas were undone by the pretenders who were too lazy to do real journalism.
So, in this limited series, I’ll lay out the true story of the demise of Project Veritas and give you an inside look into what really happened.
This work has been informed by both publicly available information and by conversations with dozens of current and former employees of the organization at all levels, from relatively junior employees all the way up to multiple board members. Throughout it, you’ll get details and receipts not previously shared publicly.
Here’s the TLDR: Project Veritas WAS NOT bought and paid for by Pfizer. It was burnt to the ground by James O’Keefe as revenge.
And conservative media helped James to spread a massive smear campaign against the organization to do so.
That’s the real tragedy of this situation: James O’Keefe would not have been successful in destroying Project Veritas if conservative media and influencers hadn’t helped him do it.
In this first part of the story, we’ll discuss the events between February-June 2023, in which James O’Keefe proactively engaged in a smear campaign to destroy Project Veritas after he was told no by the organizations board of directors.
In the second part, we’ll discuss what has happened to the organization since, leading to the layoff of the vast majority of the organization’s staff, and where you can expect it to go from here.
Let’s get started.
In order to understand what happened at Project Veritas, you must understand two things:
The majority of the journalists and employees at Project Veritas are deeply committed to the organization’s mission. “Be brave. Do something” is not just a slogan to them - they lived it. They did what they did because if they did not, the organization would have imploded for a different reason than the one we’re faced with now, and they genuinely wanted James O’Keefe to stay on board and continue with the mission. They did not anticipate that he would abandon them.
But abandon them he did. And the reason James O’Keefe abandoned Project Veritas and ran a smear campaign against them is because he has narcissistic personality disorder.
This is not a claim I make lightly, nor do I use it as an insult or a slur. NPD is a sad thing that is not the fault of the people who have it. However, it is necessary to understand this because it will explain why James behaves the way he does in this scenario. Throughout this piece, I will point out how his narcissism drove James’s behavior.
There will likely be people who read this who consider James a hero, so reading that your hero is a narcissist will be brutal. But all idols have clay feet. It is not James’s fault that he has narcissistic personality disorder because NPD develops in childhood. However, how he behaved is still his responsibility and was ultimately the main cause of the current state of Project Veritas.
It was never about Pfizer.
Much has been made of the timing of James O’Keefe leaving Project Veritas in relation to the release of the Pfizer story, arguably one of the biggest stories in the organization’s history.
The problems started years prior with James egregiously spending donor money in a way that, if audited, would have jeopardized the organization’s 501(c)3 non-profit status. Losing their non-profit status would severely impact fundraising because they would no longer be tax-exempt.
This is where James’s narcissism starts to rear its head. Narcissists believe they are entitled to whatever they want without repercussions or consequences. James felt entitled to use the money he raised in any way he wanted and didn’t want anyone telling him no.
Sadly, when you’re the CEO of a non-profit as James was, you do not have carte blanche to behave however you want or spend money willy-nilly. You report to a board of directors with a fiduciary responsibility for the organization that donors can personally sue if they do not uphold that responsibility. You must also abide by IRS guidelines or lose your ability to fundraise through tax-exempt donations.
Project Veritas started working with James to resolve these issues in 2020 and 2021, trying various methods to curtail the spending. However, none of it worked. By 2022, James's spending was becoming more egregious, including lying about visiting donors so that he could take private planes to visit his girlfriend (without visiting donors), and staying in luxury hotel suites when there was no valid or security reason.
At the same time, James was a less-than-ideal boss to work for. He has admitted this himself but the full extent of it has been glossed over. James terrorized the staff at Project Veritas to the point where some were afraid to speak when he was in the office.
James didn’t just direct his rage at lower-level employees - he also showed his senior staff (many of whom he had hand-selected for the roles) the same lack of consideration.
Things came to a head internally on January 31, 2023, when James was confronted about his spending. The organization’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) - both of whom were hired by James and considered him a personal friend - attempted to put a third-party approval process in place for expenditures. In response, James exploded at them and publicly berated them in a way that everyone in the building that day was aware of. This led to a request for the board to intervene to address the toxic work environment that James had created.
The thing that narcissists hate more than anything else is being taken out of control.
The problems with James’s spending had been increasing for years, meaning that James was testing the limits of what he could get away with. Every time he was told no, he ignored it or placated the problem before returning to what he had been doing and becoming even more brazen.
When the CFO and CSO met with James to lay down some hard guidelines regarding his spending, they took James out of control.
When narcissists are taken out of control, they will retaliate to put themselves back into control.
The first retaliation was James blowing up in the January 31 meeting. This scorching rage is what narcissism expert (and self-aware diagnosed narcissist himself) HG Tudor calls ignited fury and is designed to be used as a weapon against the people who have criticized the narcissist (thus taking them out of control).
The second retaliation came two days after the staff meeting blowup meeting on February 2. James fired the CFO and the CSO who had attempted to curtail his spending. He did not have the unilateral authority to do this without the approval of another board member. James lied and said he had approval from a board member that he did not have. Again, this shows James’s sense of entitlement.
Four days later on February 6, 2023, James was forced to sit through a board meeting where several hours of employee testimony was heard about his toxic behavior. As a result of James’ explosion on January 31, about 1/3rd of Project Veritas’s staff came together to compile a list of examples of James’s toxic behavior and presented that information to the board in the form of a letter.
RC Maxwell - James’s right-hand man - later leaked that letter to Timcast News on behalf of James.
Narcissists cultivate a stable of lieutenants who will do their dirty work. Learn more about that in this video. These people not only provide a source of fuel for the narcissist but also provide them with residual benefits in the way of doing favors for them. RC Maxwell is a lieutenant of James O’Keefe, and was one of the few people who left Project Veritas with him.
However, the staff issues were not the only things addressed at the February 6 meeting: James’s refusal to adhere to the spending process and guidelines and his unilateral firing of the CFO and CSO were also addressed.
As a result, the board (who all considered themselves to be friends with James and genuinely wanted him to stay with the organization) implemented the following measures:
They put James on two weeks of PAID leave. The fact that it was paid leave will be important - James received a salary through the end of February 20th.
Because James had unilaterally fired people he wasn’t allowed to unilaterally fire, the board suspended his ability to hire and fire employees for 180 days. They also officially re-instated the CFO and the CSO.
They took away James’s use of the company credit card, because he was refusing to follow the spending procedures.
They restricted James’s access to the donor list while he was on paid leave.
James remained as CEO of the company and as a board member.
Essentially, the board sent James on a mandatory paid vacation while they were doing their due diligence to fully investigate the issues. However, the intent was always to figure out how to rectify the issues so they could welcome James back.
Additionally, the intention was to keep this entire affair private. Neither the board, nor the staff members who spoke up about James’s behavior, leaked the meeting. It was James O’Keefe who leaked what happened at this meeting through his lieutenant, RC Maxwell. And he did so, again, because the board had taken him out of control and this was his way of trying to reassert himself.
While he was on paid time off, still receiving a paycheck, James broke his employee agreement.
Four days later, on February 10, 2023, another board meeting occurred. James failed to attend it (he was entitled to even if he was on PTO because he was still a board member and had three votes - one as the founder, one as a board member, and one as CEO).
At this board meeting, the CFO presented the initial results of the investigation he had been conducting into the full extent of James’s spending. Based on the initial results, the board took the following actions:
The results of the CFO’s intital investigation into James’s spend was so egregious that the board hired an external third-party to do a formal audit of James’s spending.
This was necessary because James’s spending had seriously jeopardized the organization’s non-profit status.
The board wanted to use a third-party to come up with a way to rectify the spending so that James could remain in the organization with safeguards around the spending in place.
They suspended James without pay effective at the end of his paid time off, which was scheduled to end on February 20, pending the third-party audit results.
Six days later, on February 16, 2023, James sent an email demanding the resignation of all board members within 24 hours and stating he would not return to Project Veritas unless there were no safeguards on his spending and unless he could unilaterally fire anyone he wanted.
Again, what you must recognize here is James’s desperate attempt to regain control. Essentially, he was pissed off that the board told him “no” and was going to make him reimburse the company for money that he should not have spent.
But James (because he’s a narcissist) felt entitled to spend the money in whatever way he wanted and demanded to continue to do whatever he wanted to do without consequence or consideration for how it impacted anyone else in the organization.
Again, the answer he received was no.
The following day on February 17, 2023, James broke his employee agreement with Project Veritas by forming his current organization O’Keefe Media Group (OMG). He did this while he was still being paid a salary for his role as CEO, and while he was still a board member with a fiduciary responsibility to Project Veritas.
James starts his smear campaign against Project Veritas
When narcissists are taken out of control, one of the most common tactics to regain control is to engage in a smear campaign against the people they perceive to have wronged them. It’s such a common tactic that our resident narcissist expert, HG Tudor, has written an entire book about it called Smeared.
If he couldn’t be in control of Project Veritas, then no one would be.
On February 20, 2023, the final day of James’s paid time off (so the organization was still paying him), James invited a select group of employees to the Project Veritas office.
It was President’s Day. James picked that day to do his speech because knew the office would be closed. No one else would be there except the people he asked to be there. None of the company’s officers were there and there was only one Director was in attendance.
This was the audience that James gave a 44 minute speech to because he considered them friendly and wanted to poach them from the organization to join him in the newly-formed OMG:
It’s funny that there happens to be a video of this speech, right? James had personally invited everyone there, so why would he need a recording of what should have been an off-the-record conversation?
Because he never intended it to be off the record.
And we know that because James was very concerned with the file name of the recording.
When the speech was originally recorded, the people recording it saved the file as “James O’Keefe Resignation”. However, James demanded they change the file name - he wanted it to be very clear that he had not resigned when the file was shared. He was trying to frame the narrative that he had been forced out.
Even though James told the people in attendance they were recording his speech for internal use, a video of this speech was immediately leaked to TimCast News by (again) RC Maxwell on behalf of James.
And TimCast ran with the narrative James wanted them to.
The problem is that this was not true. James had not been removed from the board or as CEO. When he gave this speech and leaked it, he was still on paid time off and was receiving a salary, and it had been made very clear to him that the desire of all involved was to keep James on board with safeguards on the spending.
The narrative that James was forced out of Project Veritas was just that - a narrative.
It was a narrative crafted by James O’Keefe to paint himself as the ultimate victim of corruption.
James O’Keefe was never forced out of the organization.
James O’Keefe walked away from it and then did everything he could to burn it to the ground.
Days later, one person who had been on James’s select list of invitees to his private office party discovered the following: Several journalists working with James had planned to record people inside of Project Veritas secretly, mass resign, and attempt to steal footage from the organization’s server.
Less than one month later on March 15, 2023, James formally announced the launch of the media group that he had established while he was still being paid a salary by Project Veritas.
James then went on a conservative media tour, smearing Project Veritas as being bought and paid for by Pfizer and selling this narrative that he was forced out of his own organization as a result.
And every show he was on bought it hook, line, and sinker and never bothered to reach out to anyone at Project Veritas to get their version of events.
On May 15, 2023, James was finally officially terminated from Project Veritas for cause.
On May 31, 2023, Project Veritas sued James O’Keefe. They did so not just because James broke his employee agreement but also because they genuinely believed this was the best way they had to present the truth of what happened.
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Because of the success of James O’Keefe’s conservative smear campaign, the public didn’t care what the truth was.
The same conservative influencers who helped James spread his smear campaign dismissed the suit as frivolous and continued to degrade the committed group of journalists and employees that remained at the organization.
Here is a PDF of the lawsuit so you can read the evidence for yourself:
That night, James O’Keefe went on TimCastIRL to present his made up narrative about Project Veritas being bought and paid for by Pfizer. Tim spent all night telling James what a hero he was.
Tim Pool has never reached out to anyone at Project Veritas to get their side of the story.
There is one refrain I hear time and time again when talking with journalists and employees from Project Veritas: They all say “Fuck Tim Pool” with a righteous indignation that would have made Andrew Brietbart proud.
As a result of the ongoing smears that had started months prior, Project Veritas employees and journalists were on the constant receiving end of abuse. It didn’t matter that they were still breaking important news. It didn’t matter that they were just trying to do their job. They were constantly abused to the point where many of them considered it a relief to be laid off from their job a little over a week ago.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll discuss Project Veritas bringing on Hannah Giles as CEO and the long list of reasons that she fired the majority of the staff.
There’s a lot more to this story beyond James O’Keefe. He may be the primary person responsible for the implosion of Project Veritas, but he’s not the only person.
Stay tuned for more.
Questions?
Let me know in the comments!
Fight back against the woke and support my work.
I believe the woke - on the left and the right - are an existential threat to our values as Americans. Some of them know it, most of them are just useful innocents. Regardless, fighting back against this woke cultural revolution is my full-time job. I’m dedicated to exposing the woke ideology in our country, helping people to understand what’s going on, and providing spaces for non-woke people to connect, support each other, and plan ways to fight back.
Here’s how you can help.
Order my book: Actively Unwoke: The ultimate guide to fighting back against woke insanity in your life.
Other Ways to Support My Work:
Subscribe to the Unwoke Art Substack and buy cool unwoke merch in the Unwoke Art store
I haven't followed this story closely, but I'm still shocked. Thanks, Karlyn, for exposing James and the truth. I really hope the PV journalists find a new home, so they can continue to do the great work they had been doing.
Time will tell, And when that day comes in the future, will the people in this story be vindicated.
I believe its important for a record of foresight is needed.
We have heard what Okeefe has told us.
But, we have not heard from the pyramid of people who Okeefe stands on.