James O’Keefe, the right-wing’s garbage answer to both Michael Moore and Punk’d, is drawing attention again, this time for allegedly firing an employee who refused to strong-arm an operative into following a hidden-camera video script that would bait anti-police brutality protestors into making violent statements against police. His “investigative reporting”/propaganda organization Project Veritas recently used the same manipulative tactics against Eric Garner’s daughter.
Rich Valdes, former Director of Operations for Project Veritas, is threatening to sue O’Keefe for wrongful termination “because [O’Keefe] was unhappy with me for being unwilling to strong-arm the guy to do his dirty work,” he told the Post.
Valdes says that the incident in question happened in January, when a Muslim undercover agent refused to say things like “I wish I could kill some of these cops” while infiltrating a protest group.
“‘I will not say words that will jeopardize my entity, especially when they involve an illegal act of ‘murdering police,’’ the agent wrote in a Jan. 9 e-mail to Valdes and cc’d to O’Keefe,” the Post reports.
O’Keefe pressured Valdes, who was also uncomfortable with the assignment, to pressure the operative into following through.
A Project Veritas spokesperson said that the organization would never do anything to incite violence against police.
James O’Keefe is notorious for his stunt journalism, in which he misrepresents himself to provoke liberals into saying controversial things. Conservative website The Blaze has called his tactics “entrapment.” He was convicted of a misdemeanor in connection to his attempts to illegally access and record inside Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu’s office.