New Orleans       The ongoing dog pile at Project Veritas, the Frankenstein vanity project of rightwing video-scammer James O’Keefe, continues unabated.  It’s hard not to enjoy a good thing.  None of that is to say that O’Keefe won’t try to resurrect himself in the all-forgiving ecosystem of the right, but the mountain that he’ll have to climb is getting higher and higher, and with any luck Project Veritas will continue its implosion on the road to total collapse.

O’Keefe and Veritas are drowning in a litany of problems, scandals, and lawsuits.  They seem to have tried to settle a couple of them by paying a pretty penny.  One suit centered on their failure to pay overtime.  The lawyer for plaintiffs claimed that “Project Veritas thrived for years by exploiting young videographers and film editors” …and added that “the group’s leaders knew that was unlawful.”  Price tag for that settlement was $270,000.  People should be paid fair wages and whatever overtime is involved in their labor.  “Exploiting” is perhaps going too far, because the video they were taking and the scurrilous way some of it was being edited, almost makes them culpable and guilty after the fact.  Certainly, they could not have been unaware of the settlements that O’Keefe had been forced to pay for such shenanigans as part of his attack on ACORN.  Regardless, they now get justice and maybe these young’uns will learn something from their PV time in the political sewer of the right that O’Keefe never has learned.

The other suit they cashed out was from Antoinetta Zappier, who had been a close assistant of O’Keefe’s down to the level of handling his laundry and signing books for him for donors who had paid $200 for her signature, thinking it was his.  She had accused PV of a toxic atmosphere that included sexual harassment and more, when she left.  No surprise that they paid the freight to make that case go away, because even if the organization wasn’t on its last legs, that might have been the final straw, if she had been on the stand and spilling her guts about everything she knew of the office mischief and mayhem.  The dollar amount of that settlement is sealed, but I’ll bet she made bank and certainly enough to relax her search for a better job.

Maybe it’s self-serving and, hopefully, it’s true, but the lawyer for the plaintiffs in these cases says that Project Veritas is in “turmoil” and that “O’Keefe had been its principal fund-raiser and that it had lost tens of thousands of social media followers after his departure.”  Good riddance to bad rubbish.  The PV staff and board, such as it was, pushed him out when his financial excesses and narcissism became even too much for them.

Whatever is left of Veritas is still on the death watch.  The Justice Department continues investigating its Biden-daughter diary snatch and some of the criminals there have turned state’s evidence.  They have a defamation suit against the New York Times, where no settlement seems likely.  It all couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.

I no longer predict the end of O’Keefe, since he seems to continue to pop up, and his dirty tricks might be on speed dial in 2024 with another national election pending, but his comeback trail keeps getting longer and rougher as his baby, Project Veritas, sinks lower and lower.