New Orleans       I guess it’s finally time to reckon with reality and admit the truth.  Over the last fifteen years, a small but feisty self-appointed group has assembled unbeknownst to each other.  These men and women, all acting independently, contact me regularly, and I appreciate hearing from them.  They are all part of what I will now call the O’Keefe Campaign Watch.

James O’Keefe, as many, hopefully fewer and fewer people, will remember is a scammer, convicted felon, and journalistic imposter, whose duplicitous editing of “gotcha” footage was useful in the conservative attack project that laid ACORN low in the United States in 2009-2010.  For way too long over the last fifteen years, he has been a darling of the far right with one preposterous scheme after another trying to find any slither of facts to support his and his fans wild political conspiracy theories.  More recently, his star has faded significantly as his personal narcissism swallowed his personal project.  It wasn’t his conviction for trying to bug US Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu’s office that unraveled him.  It wasn’t his attempt to train his acolytes as spies with former spooks on Wyoming ranches, which would have been the limit for most reasonable people. Not only that, but it wasn’t even his role in directing the theft of President Biden’s daughter’s diary in Florida, which got other confederates jail time.  It was more his self-dealing and financial excesses at his misnamed Project Veritas.  Never, say never, when it comes to O’Keefe, he will no doubt try a weird and wacky comeback this election season as well.

Heaven forbids, we now find that there are O’Keefe copycats, trying to find similar fame and fortune at the risk of our democracy.  Some Long Island yahoos, brothers named Anthony and Joshua Rubin, calling themselves Muckrakers of course in a straight line takeoff of the O’Keefe model, seem to have manufactured a fake flier, exploiting a Matamoras refugee aid nonprofit purporting to encourage immigrants to vote for Biden.  Descriptions of the flier indicate it was wildly slapdash, and discredited by the charity of course, and, unsurprisingly, unclaimed by the Island bros.  None of that stopped Majorie Taylor Greene from blowing it up life-size for Congress, or millions of far righties from jumping the shark all the way down.  They are backed up by something from the conservative Heritage Foundation and a so-called “deportation scientist,” whatever that might be, who runs its Oversight Project, and may be funding the muckers exploits.

Even with O’Keefe off the scene for a minute, look what he and his enablers have wrought and continue to use to entrap gullible supporters with misinformation in order to subvert US elections.  The O’Keefe Campaign Watch is going to need to saddle up for some hard riding from now until November, and likely beyond.