An Interview With James O’Keefe

“I started off with nothing but a camera and a passion for truth.”

How did you get started as a journalist? While a student at Rutgers University, I founded the newspaper The Centurion with the goal of exposing wrongdoing on my college campus. My first experience in national journalism was in 2009, when I went undercover inside ACORN offices across the country to expose fraud and rampant corruption. Those undercover videos made national headlines and led to congressional action. Under a Democratic House of Representatives, Democratic Senate, and President Obama, the federal government voted to fully defund ACORN, which led to its bankruptcy soon thereafter. Subscribers, click here to read the full magazine. Not a subscriber? Click here to become a Patriot member today and receive access to The American Spectator in print and online! What animates your work? What has motivated me from the very beginning is the pursuit of truth. From a very early age, I noticed that our media was broken and no longer pursuing journalism with the purpose of informing the public. Project Veritas’ work is to do the job that the media refuses to do, with no profit imperative, deception, lies, or propaganda. What do you feel has been your biggest contribution to independent journalism? In 2019, we pioneered the “Be Brave. Do Something.” insiders program that enables whistleblowers from public and private institutions to come forward safely when they have evidence of corruption that the American people have a right to know about. The powerful accounts that Project Veritas has published since the program’s inception have arguably been our biggest contribution to independent journalism. Which of your projects has been the most rewarding for you personally? Recently, Project Veritas filed several lawsuits against media and Big Tech organizations that defamed us. We are suing the New York Times, CNN, and Twitter, to name a few. We recently won against the New York Times on the motion to dismiss, which puts us in a unique category of plaintiffs to defeat the Ne...