Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » big government

James O’Keefe Over the Line – Again!?!

jstuart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:49:42 +0000

New Orleans I continue to be fascinated that James O’Keefe has any credibility with anyone anywhere in the world. The list is endless from his ACORN fake costuming and scurrilous video editing to his crazed phone tapping of Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in New Orleans and on to one preposterous self-aggrandizing ego trip after another including a puff piece in the New York Times magazine. A piece popped up on my Google Alerts though that surprised me so much, I wondered if it was a hoax, given how bizarre it is even for O’Keefe. The piece ran in Op Ed News by a Gustav Wynn. It has been previously reported by O’Keefe’s home town paper in New Jersey and by Keith Olbermann, so some serious credibility has been attached to the piece.

At the least, suffice it to say, this dude is still totally out of control!

Sex, Drugs and Videotape: James O’Keefe Implicated in Barn Rape Plot

By: Gustavo Wynn

As reported by Keith Olbermann, Raw Story and NorthJersey.com, disturbing charges were leveled against James O’Keefe, the undercover “pimp” made famous in videos that informed a Congressional vote to defund ACORN (later ruled unconstitutional).

A conservative blogger from Tampa has reportedly shared details indicating she believes she became incapacitated and had her underwear stolen while she was in O’Keefe’s company.

Her October 2nd visit concerned a proposal to be in one of O’Keefe’s anti-Occupy Wall Street videos, says accuser Nadia Naffe – O’Keefe picked her up at the Newark train station and stopped off at a liquor store before driving her to his parents house where negotiations got contentious and O’Keefe became verbally abusive.

Naffe claims she began to have trouble controlling her muscles and threatened to call the police when she felt O’Keefe was trying to coerce her to stay. As she testified in a criminal complaint, O’Keefe demonstrated an “intent to persuade me to spend the night in the barn”. O’Keefe and a pal instead drove her to Penn Station in NYC, Naffe reported, adding she lost consciousness during the ride.

After traveling on to Boston where she attends grad school at Harvard, Naffe alleged her bag had been rifled through, with panties and other items taken. She also reports O’Keefe made an unsolicited offer of money, but began harassing her shortly after she refused the cash, through direct messages and third parties.

On Nov. 17, O’Keefe posted a video smearing “tramp” Naffe as “filthy” and “dirty”, but since removed the video. That same day, Politico reported Naffe was one of several O’Keefe collaborators “in-fighting”, noting accounts she had been treated “disrespectfully”.

O’Keefe’s Project Veritas settled one complaint with a former associate in exchange for silence while threatening other ex-associates with legal action for breaching confidentiality agreements.

Naffe responded on Nov. 21 with a criminal complaint – O’Keefe was hauled into a probable cause hearing in a county court on December 21. O’Keefe did not speak during or after the hearing, and was relieved as the case was dismissed on an apparent jurisdictional technicality. But Judge Alan Karch did pro-actively advise Naffe she could pursue civil damages.

O’Keefe is currently being sued for deceptively editing a video that led to the firing of an ACORN employee in San Diego and he is also on federal probation after a misdemeanor conviction for entering a US Senator’s office under false pretenses in Louisiana. Despite this, many, including this reporter, believe O’Keefe has received some eye-popping special privileges during his previous run-ins with the law.

O’Keefe’s generous plea deal in Louisiana knocked felony charges down to fines and misdemeanors without jail time. His co-defendant in that case, Robert Flanagan, is the son of a U.S. Attorney in Shreveport.

But even more curiously, O’Keefe was bestowed criminal immunity for violating the privacy rights of San Diego sting subject Juan Carlos Vera by then Attorney General of California Jerry Brown in exchange for providing Brown’s office the full, unedited tapes of the encounter. After viewing the tapes, Brown also advised the victim to pursue a civil lawsuit against O’Keefe — which he did.

That lawsuit has been dragging on since our July 2010 report, but has notably become a cause taken up by heavyweight Republican lawyers in DC who are funded in part by Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers’ billionaire donor network.

O’Keefe’s defense is being provided “pro bono” by Center for Individual Rights, a legal institute who is also currently challenging parts of the Voting Rights Act of 1964. CIR is co-directed by Larry Arnn of Hillsdale College, a charter sponsor of the Sean Hannity radio show.

In March 2011, Christopher Hajec, one of CIR’s lawyers, told TPM that his organization is representing O’Keefe for free because O’Keefe’s case stood out as a First Amendment issue. Eric Gressler and Michael Madigan of the law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP also are helping with O’Keefe’s defense, even though their legal fees typically far exceed the $75,000 sought in the suit.

It’s strange that CIR and the battery of legal minds being bankrolled by wealthy Republican donors are investing so much in this case while ignoring the numerous First Amendment cases brought against undercover videographers who document abuse and health hazards in factory farms. Lawmakers in Iowa, Minnesota, Florida and New York have tried to criminalize undercover videotaping in farms, including by journalists.

Unlike O’Keefe and his defense team, Florida state senator Jim Norman says undercover sting videos are “unfair outside assaults” on intellectual and private property rights, incredibly, adding it is “almost like terrorism, the way they go in”. CIR lawyers seem way out of place asserting First Amendment rights in the O’Keefe case, while these important public health and animal cruelty cases languish.

This leads many to feel that O’Keefe is a ‘golden boy’, protected by wealthy conservative backers. Just as O’Keefe first came into the spotlight with the release of his ACORN “pimp” videos, the Village Voice exposed his relationship with super-rich sugar daddy Peter Thiel, contrary to O’Keefe’s claims of independence. Today, his Project Veritas discloses on tax forms that they are still in search of “major donors” to support their work.

In May 2011, we reported federal Judge Dembin rejected James O’Keefe’s assertion that his freedom of speech as an ‘undercover’ news gatherer trumps the privacy rights of California residents and the prohibition on surreptitious recordings. Though this defense seemed outrageous, it has already succeeded in wasting time and dragging out the case.

In October 2011, we reported that Judge Dembin compelled Andrew Breitbart to disclose all communications between he and O’Keefe as well as undercover ‘ho’ Hannah Giles. About the same time, SEC filings showed Breitbart had just received $10 million in funding from two undisclosed donors.

It is not clear what Nadia Naffe’s next step will be – O’Keefe did settle one earlier ACORN lawsuit out of court, but nothing he was accused of in the past approached anything like the date-rape scenario Naffe’s court filings suggest.

It’s also not clear whether O’Keefe obtained required permission from his parole officer to travel to Manhattan to transport the impaired blogger as described in the account.

If Naffe presses charges implying O’Keefe was involved in drugging her and weakening her senses in order to detain her, it could become an extremely serious matter for a federal parolee.

While it’s also possible some or all of Naffe’s story is fabricated or mistaken, O’Keefe hasn’t officially denied it yet. The site BigGovernment where both parties are listed contributors has whitewashed the sordid tale completely as if it’s not really happening.

Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Admits Boo-boo on “Days of Rage”

dine — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:03:28 +0000

Wall Street Protest

New Orleans I admit that I check the Google alerts everyday to see how the alternative universe is doing where this other “wade rathke” lives, who is often unrecognizable to me. The most recent episode in his “life,” was some kind of “days of rage” planned for Wall Street, which was quite the buzz on Glenn Beck’s “news” website, Blaze.com. On the right they took all of this fantasy so seriously that I actually had to turndown interview requests from various Fox News outlets wanting to know more details on what I was supposedly planning for this unknown event. Most often I was linked to Stephen Lerner, my colleague from the SEIU years, who was attracting some of the right wing love out there.
I guess the “days” happened this last weekend with not 20,000 but perhaps 1000 folks in some part in New York City, none of which is surprising. In NYC more than a 1000 folks would gather for almost anything. The real shock was to read Andrew Brietbart’s Big Government report where they conceded that all of the reports of Lerner and “Rathke’s” wild and revolutionary doings here were in fact “unfounded,” and to add a cherry on top, they even zinged Beck and Blaze for the fabulous fiction.

#OccupyWallSt: Just a Saturday Stroll Through the Park…
by LaborUnionReport
It was supposed to be this:

On the 17th of September, we want to see 20,000 people to flood into lower Manhattan, set up beds, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months.
Instead, as they say about the best laid plans, it was something entirely different. It was, frankly, a stroll through a park—Zuccotti Park, in lower Manhattan, to be exact.
A Non-Union Non-Event

Over the summer, on the heels of Arab Spring, an anti-capitalist group called adbusters established a campaign to occupy Wall Street, beginning on September 17th. Whether coincidental or not, September 17th also happened to be Constitution Day. While there had been some unfounded unfounded speculation a few weeks ago that the SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke were behind the OccupyWallSt movement, there were never any signs that the Marxist-Anarchist protesters had any formal union backing—nor has there been anything posted on union websites about the occupation of Wall St.
This morning, protestors did, however, call for “revolution”.

Big Government then linked back to the Blaze below.
The alternative universe of the right is a scary, scary place though. The original Blaze article may not have gone viral, but it did get traction. More than 6000 righters had “liked” it and moved it to their Facebook walls. The story had been tweeted 513 times and there were 739 comments most of which would have stripped paint off of cars.

And for all of the good work that Color of Change and others had done to get advertisers to boycott Beck during his Fox News time with Rupert Murdoch’s empire, it was disconcerting to see ads on the Blaze story from Orvis, where I’ve bought more than one fly rod and reel, and Green Mountain coffee promoting fair trade coffee, which will leave me head scratching a good part of the day. What’s up with these guys?
US Who Is Behind the ‘US Day of Rage’ to ‘Occupy’ Wall Street this September 17th?

What, exactly, is a “US Day of Rage?” Well, on September 17th we may find out for certain, but until then, The Blaze is revealing what information does exist about this very nefarious-sounding campaign.

A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated by a group of radicals — that reportedly include SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke (who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if its intentions are indeed non-violent in nature — appears to contradict itself slightly.

But what is perhaps even more interesting than its title is who is allegedly behind the movement.

You may recall that back in March The Blaze exposed Lerner for stating his aspirations to destroy JP Morgan Chase and cause the collapse of the entire stock market.
Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan’s financial district. Similar protests are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even world — at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district for months at a time.
The Blaze’s report on Lerner, who serves on SEIU’s International Executive Board, caught the union agitator stating:

So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room, but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York the first week in May.

Then, like clockwork, some 400 activists brought Lerner’s dream to fruition and converged on JP Morgan Chase’s annual shareholders’ meeting in May — this time in Columbus, Ohio rather than New York. The group that staged this particular protest, the National People’s Action, reportedly confirmed it was there as part of its “Showdown in America” campaign against the big banks. Since the location of JP Morgan Chase’s meeting was surrounded by a moat, the activists, who likened themselves to Robin Hood, even brought a collapsible bridge to “storm the castle.”

It is also perhaps worth noting that in March, The Blaze reported Rathke and Lerner called for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase.” Rathke mentioned some of Lerner’s key assertions:

While labeling Lerner an ex-SEIU official who was signaling that unions and community organizations were “dead,” also reported hook-line-and-sinker that in May, according to Lerner, there would be days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan Chase signally the beginning of the anti-banking jihad.

So it might add up now that Klein Online reported Rathke’s efforts are being organized by Lerner, who, as part of his planned protests, called for “a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city:”

The planned Sept. 17 day of rage seems to be the culmination of Rathke’s efforts.
Those efforts are being organized by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member who reportedly visited the Obama White House at least four times.

The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement.”

“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in March.
So, it appears, Columbus could have been one of the ten U.S. cities en route to New York for the “big day.”

O’Keefe Not Sorry Yet

jstuart — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:16:49 +0000

New Orleans We are finally pulling all of the pretense and fiction out of the Landrieu office bungling scandal. Andrew Breitbrat and his www.biggovernment.com site stopped pretending that James O’Keefe, bungler-in-charge, was not his boy, and realized that he needed to stop shouting and start ‘splaining. The result was a curious release on the biggov website.

Clown-on-the-nose boy, as Breitbrat has referred to the them now, offered a rationale that they were trying to establish that the phones weren’t being answered for health care complainers. This is weak tea. They would have done better videotaping some of the whiners trying to call in and either getting a response or not (of course if they had recorded the Senator’s office, they might have been in deep stuff on that one) or they might have not had much to look at on the video if the phone was answered, which is why they went out as bungle babies.

They still don’t get it though. Either Breitbrat or O’Keefe.

His quotes are classics.

“On reflection,” Mr. O’Keefe said, “I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building.”

Let me help show how this works, James. “Could” is a different word that “should,” as in “I should have used a different approach”…and so forth. This is not an apology for a massive mess-up. This is a vacillating gallon of spit being thrown on a raging forest fire.

Senator Landrieu was more caustic. She didn’t miss the fact that the little sniveler was still skating around. Her comment was essentially: tell it to your lawyer, the FBI, and the judge – and good luck, Chuck!

Dishing it out may mean learning how to take it, too, but in this case, these guys have wasted their 5 seconds of “fame,” so let’s go fry bigger fish and leave these minnows to their own piece of the swamp.

He’s been ordered back to his parents’ house. Maybe they can take another crack at teaching him how to say, “I’m sorry.”

Big Government Guy Dances Poorly

jstuart — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:55:40 +0000

Shreveport I tried to make my way through an understanding of the President’s new plan for a path to victory, but though I like to think that I’m as smart as the average bear, I couldn’t find it in my first reading, though it seems a lot of things are increasingly on the “dead” list including health care, comprehensive immigration reform, labor law reform, cap-and-trade, and probably your favorite issue as well. Hey, just as we thought maybe at the least we might get some financial reform, he puts the shoulder rub on Tim Geithner, who is the Secretary of the Treasury giveaway and a huge weight around the President’s neck. Guy wanted someone to thank him for their not being a “depression,” while not realizing that tens of millions of people think there is a depression and find it all just a matter of degree without a real difference.

If all of that didn’t confuse me enough, I found something almost identical in reading the Washington Independent which was trying to parse whether or not James O’Keefe, the inept ACORN scammer and lowlife Senator Landrieu wire tapper, was working for Andrew Breitbart and his biggovernment.com websites, but was “not” working for them. Huh? Which is only to say that he was a direct subcontractor (we’ll have to see how “independent”) and that Breitbart doesn’t want the bungling on his shoes, despite the fact that he has relished the indirect smear tactic and O’Keefe repeatedly. It’s all too rich…when what goes around, comes around, and they still pretend to not get it.

Breitbart will throw O’Keefe under the bus. Bank on that. But, the tire tracks are all over him too and no amount of dancing will make that go away. The kid gloves are on for sure, but no amount of ducking and weaving will keep these punches from falling.

James O’Keefe: Not Working for Big Government, But on the Payroll

By David Weigel 1/27/10 10:31 AM

Justin Elliot catches Andrew Breitbart giving a factual-but-tortured explanation of how Big Government was not responsible for James O’Keefe’s bungled phone plot against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). The interviewer is Hugh Hewitt — for what it’s worth, a veteran of the Nixon administration who once ran the 37th president’s official library.

AB: So when [O'Keefe] puts a story out there, it’s on the Brietbart sites, the Big sites, that he can tell people what transpired. So…

HH: Do you pay him for that?

AB: Yes.

HH: And are you free to tell me how much you pay him?

AB: I’ll… perhaps at another date, but he’s paid a fair salary.

HH: Is he… so he is an employee?

AB: I’m not sure that’s technically the thing, but yes, he’s paid for his life rights. And he’s, you know, he’s still… we reserve the right to say yes or no to any of the stories that he puts up on our site as we do to any other contributor who comes to the site.

HH: Will it be a mischaracterization to say he was working for you when he went about this?

AB: Well, I mean, no. He was not involved in anything that was related to Big Government, or Breitbart.com.

HH: And I think that’s the key thing. Lots of people work for lots of corporations, and do dumb and sometimes illegal things that are not within the scope of their employment. And this was not within the scope of his employment.

AB: Yes, absolutely. That is absolutely the case.

From the outset, Breitbart and Big Government editor-in-chief Mike Flynn have said that O’Keefe was acting on his own, and that they had no knowledge whatsoever of what he was planning in New Orleans. No one has proven them wrong. But Big Government, like many conservative news sites, has run repeated stories linking unions to ACORN based on minor financial ties — or less.

A Jan. 6 story at Big Government accused ACORN and “big labor” of being in cahoots because “ACORN files labor organization financial reports for SEIU 880 and SEIU 100 with the U.S. Department of Labor.” A Jan. 5 story made the case against National Labor Relations Board nominee Craig Becker because he was endorsed by ACORN founder Wade Rathke. A December 2009 story about Health Care for America Now accused the organization of being a front group for ACORN because ACORN members were listed as state contacts. “In short,” argued reporter Larry O’Connor, “HCAN is ACORN.” It’s hard to imagine that if this story was flipped — if someone on the ACORN payroll was busted spying on a senator — Big Government would give ACORN a free pass.

I give Breitbart and Flynn the benefit of the doubt on this story. But if the standards and scrutiny that Big Government applies to left-wing groups are flipped back on the Website, it’s going to be tough to argue that it’s not at all connected to O’Keefe’s potential crime. Again, I’m not stating an equivalence between this situation and the ACORN scandals. I’m just saying that if O’Keefe was paid by Big Government, this story isn’t going away.