A federal judge has dealt conservative figure James O’Keefe a legal blow, ruling that his group’s undercover operations against a Democratic consulting firm can fairly be described at an upcoming million-dollar trial as “political spying.”
Making matters worse for the right-wing star, the judge cited O’Keefe’s own book as evidence against him.
In an Oct. 14 court opinion, though, U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that it’s reasonable to describe O’Keefe’s group’s actions in that way.
“‘Political spying’ is a fair characterization of the undisputed facts of this case,” Friedman, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote.
O’Keefe’s lawyers had argued that Project Veritas operates as journalists, an argument that would likely make it easier at trial for Project Veritas to claim their activities were protected under the First Amendment. But much of the evidence that Project Veritas’s operation could be called spying came from O’Keefe’s own 2018 book, American Pravda.
Describing the Democracy Partners sting in his book, O’Keefe wrote that Maass worked under an “assigned role” and compared her to a spy working in the Soviet Union—“literally living out her character in America’s capital city much as Americans overseas did in Moscow during the Cold War.”
In another setback for O’Keefe, Friedman also ruled that lawyers for Democracy Partners can introduce proof of ties between Project Veritas, and Donald Trump.
The evidence includes O’Keefe meeting with Trump during the 2016 campaign and his appearance at Trump’s election-night party and could be offered to prove that Project Veritas staffers operated as political operatives, instead of journalists. The plaintiffs also won the right to introduce video of anti-Muslim activist and then-Project Veritas employee Laura Loomer hitting a piñata shaped like Hillary Clinton as evidence.
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