The O’Keefe Project: Project Veritas’s statement

I followed up this morning on my post looking at the current New York Times story on the investigation of Project Veritas with PV attorney Paul Calli. I asked Mr. Calli for the questions submitted by the New York Times to PV and the response given to the Times, both of which were omitted from the story. Mr. Calli has provided the following as O’Keefe’s unquoted response to the questions submitted by the Times (the Times reporter addressed is Michael Schmidt).

Mike,

Mr. O’Keefe responds to your email on your deadline, as follows. Please include Mr. O’Keefe’s response in its entirety and do not selectively edit it:

The New York Times accuses Project Veritas of “decepti[on]” and more, but the New York Supreme Court ruled otherwise, stating that “the dictionary definitions of ‘disinformation’ and ‘deceptive’…certainly apply to [the New York Times’] failure to note that they injected their opinions in news articles [about Project Veritas]” and rejected the Times’ attempt to dismiss Project Veritas’ defamation lawsuit.

-James O’Keefe

In addition, Mr. Calli provided this statement in response to my request for a comment on the story:

The New York Times asked half-baked questions in its role as corporate stenographer and press secretary for the FBI and [the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York]. Project Veritas respects truth and also its investigative journalists’ privacy and does not want to repeat NYT’s ludicrous questions, many of which contain information the Times likely only learned from the government. We can share one question which demonstrates the NYT’s mendacious tactic of trying to seed the public sphere with fake narratives about “extortion[.]”

Mr. Calli provided these two question submitted by the Times:

Why did Mr. O’Keefe send an email on Oct. 12 saying that he was not going to publish the contents of the diary but later began negotiations with Biden reps to interview Mr. Biden about the diary? In subsequent letters exchanged between Project Veritas and Ms. Biden’s lawyers, Ms. Biden’s lawyers accused Project Veritas of an extortionate effort to secure an interview with Mr. Biden. Does Project Veritas have any response to this accusation?

His statement continues:

The ideations of the Times’ operatives are silly, and mean anytime a journalist asks a person for comment, it could be “extortion.” Only Project Veritas’s detractors are foolish enough to advance such a specious claim.

Shame on the NYT for trying to spin Project Veritas’s engagement of a lawyer to provide the diary and other items to local law enforcement for their return to the rightful owner. It takes a warped mind to construe such a fact as reflecting poorly on Project Veritas. The NYT should act with integrity, instead of utilizing deceptively and selectively edited facts to create false narratives that mislead its readers.

The New York Times’s latest article is again mendacious and makes clear that it knows Project Veritas committed no crime and acted with a level of journalistic integrity long-ago practiced by the Grey Lady.

The paper of record has come to resemble Ahab, and appears obsessed in its hunt of its biggest competitor – James O’Keefe.

That is the statement in its entirety verbatim.

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