Project Veritas busts CNN

 James O’Keefe has done it again:

CNN has reported Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe to police over his latest undercover investigation in which he secretly recorded network president Jeff Zucker’s morning conference calls ‘for months.’  

O’Keefe, 36, on Tuesday announced he was releasing audio recordings of several network meetings which he claims will ‘expose’ Zucker and other CNN executives expressing their ‘political biases’. 

The calls O’Keefe had been listening to over two months are the network’s daily 9am editorial meeting with senior staff from CNN’s main bureaus, which is run by Zucker. 

The move by Project Veritas is the latest sting operation orchestrated against the news station by the conservative operative who has long-targeted CNN over claims of liberal and anti-Trump bias.

I don’t think the police will be particularly interested, given the laws that govern phone call recordings. Project Veritas is based in New York and CNN is based in Georgia. And it’s not an illegal wiretap to dial in to a conference call with the correct access code.

  • New York’s wiretapping law is a “one-party consent” law. New York makes it a crime to record to record or eavesdrop on an in-person or telephone conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. 
  • Georgia’s wiretapping law is a “one-party consent” law for purposes of making audio recordings of conversations. 
Unless O’Keefe kidnapped a CNN employee and drove him across state lines before torturing him to get the access code to the daily call out of him, it’s unlikely that any crimes were committed.