BREAKING NEWS: James O Keefe Resigns

As Veritas operatives continue to try to claim that James O’Keefe was removed and didn’t resign, we now have video showing otherwise.

An emotional James O’Keefe addresses his former employees and board members as he resigns from the company that tried to throw a coup against him.

The following is the full resignation letter from James O’Keefe and his video address to his former employees and board of directors.

My Dear Project Veritas Team,

My remarks here are intended for my family here at Project Veritas;

Journalism is reporting things powerful people want kept hidden for the wrong reasons. Moral wrongs.
Bad behaviors. Journalists are the custodians of the public’s conscience. As we’ve gone deeper and
deeper exposing and illuminating corruption, the lies hidden from public view, the line that which
separates good and evil becomes more clear– not just in the institutions we investigate, but within one
another.

Throughout my 13-year journey, our mission has evolved from simply being about exposing the truth
with help from some hidden cameras to something more transcendental– giving people hope. And as
we ascended into that higher purpose, we have suffered through triumph and disaster along the way, in
a similar fashion to the experiences I wrote about in the chapter of American Muckraker called
“Suffering.”

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political
parties either — but right through every human heart.”

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

That line in the sand becomes more clear the deeper and further we go; the cream rises to the top.
I’ve felt despair, seen evil, and felt overcome these last few weeks. You could say I’ve seen glimpses of
heaven and of hell, of darkness and of light. But what I take away from these is the gratitude and tears
of joy I’ve experienced along the way. There is such goodness in so many of you, and the generosity and
good-will we have steadily built up over the past decade-and-a-half is everywhere around me:

thousands of texts and phone calls poured in from people concerned about my well being. As I was
going through this process, I reflected upon my appreciation for so many of you. What makes us great is
that we do this work because we believe– we have a passion and a flair for storytelling, for principle, for
doing the right thing, and for producing visual art– cinema verité – no matter what. These are ties that
bind us.

I know many of you have experienced despair alongside me, in spirit. One of you just told me you’d go
work at Walmart on the night shift so you could do this during the day, rather than be a sellout. In fact, I
know that is true of many of you, and many more out there who wish to be a part of this.

I remember back in the beginning when I had no money: I would have to use bubble gum, duct tape,
and my grandmother’s chinchilla. I literally had to place a Project Veritas sticker to a piece of cardboard
and tape it to a RadioShack microphone because I was so broke– and this was after experiencing a
meteoric high of the ACORN story. I became broke again because I was arrested and then crashed down
to a meteoric low, back in the carriage house, resorting once again to bubble gum and duct tape to
achieve the NPR investigation that took us yet again once more into a meteoric high. I was so broke that
I had to scribble my name and phone numbers on ripped pieces of paper because I had no business
cards.

And so the saga of this guerrilla journalist continues.

Back then there were no employees or budget, but I felt the same sensation this week. As Steve Jobs
once wrote about after being fired from Apple, the company he founded, “The heaviness of being
successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed
me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

I trudged on: from the back of that stretch limo, with two dudes dressed like Muslim brotherhood
fundamentalists and armed with hidden cameras, Project Veritas was born again once more in 2011 for
a second time. A couple of donors eventually became almost 100,000 donors 13 years later, after almost
a decade-and-a-half of 85-hour work weeks, 300 days of travel a year, and plenty of blood, sweat, and
tears, the likes of which I could never have fathomed.

The external threats and pressure inflicted against me has been unimaginable. These include getting
handcuffed by the FBI on two separate occasions, 12 years apart, having my phones confiscated and
private information leaked to media, being placed on effective house arrest for three years, being sued
dozens of times, being served two separate criminal grand jury subpoenas in NH, getting pursued in high
speed chase by a NJEA union official on Interstate 80, deposed many times over, suffering through
mediation with insurance companies, facing two federal jury trials in three years, receiving hundreds of
smears and false accusations, getting my home raided by the FBI, and having our office destroyed by a
hurricane, which forced us into a temporary workspace before rebuilding, and stirred up disgruntled
employees unloading grievances upon me. The list goes on.

Even so, as a former board member told me in 2013: Project Veritas will never be stopped from the
outside – it will only be because we stopped ourselves.

Prophetic as it may be, that is exactly where we find ourselves in the situation today – a situation where I
have been stripped of my authority as CEO and removed from the board, contrary to what any public
statements may say.