New Orleans      James O’Keefe, remember him?  He’s making an appointment for a tattoo, I would speculate.  He should have a big capital “L” put on this forehead, so people know quickly how big a loser he is, even before they read the papers, hear the news, or get wind of the detailed audit of his chicanery and grifting at his former hustle, Project Veritas.  Maybe not, but why not?  I’ll admit that I can’t be in the jury in any fraud case that the IRS might be contemplating for his shenanigans and personal inurnment using nonprofit funds, because I’m totally biased and will never forgive him for his unscrupulous, devious, and unfounded attack on ACORN fourteen years ago.  Amazing to me how he still gets away with all of this.

As some will remember, he was recently ejected from his job running dirty tricks and faux journalism in a well-reported scandal.  His organization is now reeling as it tries to crawl out of the sewer where it dwells by suing him and asking for an outside audit of PV’s expenditures.  The report ended up in the hands of the Washington Post, which I should hasten to add also would have to be disqualified from any jury, because they are still ticked off that O’Keefe tried unsuccessfully to trap them in his rightwing mischief.

The audit is not a snapshot of perfidy, but a long-running documentary of O’Keefe narcissism and featherbedding with PV cash.  Here are some tidbits:

• He booked a $12,000 helicopter flight and then a $1,400 black car to go on a sailboat, and claimed he was meeting a low-level donor.
• He used $208,980 worth of luxury black-car travel over a two-year period.
• He billed for $600 of bottled water for a hotel stay in San Antonio.
• He ripped $2,500 off for DJ equipment for a gig at Coachella, which didn’t happen.
• He would have staff manufacture flights to California on the pretense of fundraising, where he had a girlfriend.
• He cost PV more than $20 grand by moving the staff to Virginia because he was in a musical.

`It just goes on and on.  The silver lining is that his former organization is pretty much decimated, laying off 25 of its 40 staff members.  They brought Hannah Giles, also a principal in the ACORN scam, back to run the place, but it’s hard to imagine that will work out well, given her record.  Supposedly, her biggest reform was to order an end to “honey-pot” scams, which is just gross to even think that was part of the program at a supposedly tax-exempt operation collecting millions from conservative donors, but what do any of us know about journalism.

What next?  “…the “board chairman Joe Barton told staffers he was concerned that the audit, if made public, could trigger an IRS investigation or even a forced shutdown, according to a recording of the meeting that was shared with The Post.”  Let’s all just hope his fears are fully realized, even if that means believing in the fantasy that the IRS will do its job.

And as for O’Keefe?  His latest scam is something called O’Keefe Media Group.  He’s gone full on for-profit now formally, rather than having run a nonprofit as if it were his personal piggyback.  He is trying to sell $500 subscriptions to videos where he pontificates on this and that.  I think the millennials call this, trying to cash in on “his brand.”  Oh, and of course, besides grifting, he’s still trying his various super sleuth dirty tricks and failing pitifully.

Why haven’t even conservatives looked at the “sell by” date on this guy?  He’s always been a bit of evil, and now he’s a full-blown, walking, talking disaster.  It’s time that he gets what he deserves.