James O’Keefe appears to be going the way of Milo Yiannopoulos, as the Project Veritas board is actively working toward ejecting the organization’s founder.
James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, has taken a paid leave from the conservative nonprofit media organization as its board considers whether to remove him from his leadership position, according to current and former employees of the organization.
An internal message sent to Project Veritas employees by the organization’s executive director, Daniel Strack, said that O’Keefe would be taking “a few weeks of well-deserved PTO.” An image of the message was shared by a source familiar with the organization’s internal operations, and its authenticity was confirmed by a current employee. When reached for comment on his personal cell phone, O’Keefe said nothing in response and did not respond to follow-up calls and text messages. Through a Project Veritas spokesman, Strack later released a statement on behalf of the organization. “Like all newsrooms at this stage, the Project Veritas Board of Directors and Management are constantly evaluating what the best path forward is for the organization,” the statement read in part…
A meeting of the Project Veritas board is scheduled for Friday, when O’Keefe’s potential removal is set to be discussed, according to one source familiar with the matter. The source said that Project Veritas was currently divided between a group of employees who are perceived to be loyal to O’Keefe, including his communications adviser, R.C. Maxwell, and the board, which has been dissatisfied with what it perceives as O’Keefe’s mismanagement.
We’ve had people contacting us out of the blue about “investing” in Castalia and pretty much every other project since 2014. In the early days, when I would answer their emails or take their calls, they would talk about how much we would be able to accomplish if only we had more resources at our disposal and so forth. And, for the most part, what they were saying was more or less credible. But I grew up in tech, the son of a very successful entrepreneur, and I personally witnessed how pretty much every single founder who accepted investment or got acquired by a larger company, was ejected, sooner or later, regardless of how successful he was. So I don’t even respond to anyone anymore.
And it’s only worse for organizations that touch on the media and political worlds. Milo’s “investors” had a clause buried in the fine print that gave them the ability to convert their “investment” into a loan that he had to repay any time they decided to pull out and cut his legs out from under him. Which, of course, is exactly what they did. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if the Project Veritas board was stacked with directors whose primary objective has always been to remove O’Keefe from the organization as soon as the investors deemed it to be the right time to take control.
AC explains how it works, as well as how the free content from the subsidized gatekeepers tends to strangle independent operations.
In comes the angelic benefactor who hates the libs too, and wants to help and make it a job and pay his bills. And now he has a board, and people who can fire him from his own organization, and he probably has to hire the people donors ask them to hire. It is tough. That money they can throw at so many frauds like Shapiro to give all that free bullshit is why our side has so few who are really honest. There is so much free, there is no reason to pay anything.
That’s why the cult of free is a game of attrition where he who has the access to the most free money always wins. And that’s why, whether you’re an angelic benefactor or a perfectly honest capitalist who sees an intriguing vision, a smart team, and a strong track record of delivering success, the answer will always be no, absolutely not.
UPDATE: I’m told that much the same thing happened with Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept.
UPDATE: There is no room for reasonable doubt that the attempt to unseat O’Keefe is a premeditated corporate hit. The guy who is leading the charge only came on board four months ago, but O’Keefe appears to have quickly identified him as a bad actor