James O’Keefe: Not Vindicated
James O’Keefe: Not Vindicated
by Alex Seitz-Wald
“I think that there’s definitely been a double standard amongst professional journalists here because they’ve been pretty much raking Project Veritas [his company] over the coals for about three years,” O’Keefe told Yahoo’s Chris Moody in an interview yesterday. “Because I have an organization which does this precise thing and I’ve been slandered and libeled and defamed and falsely accused and arrested for the last two years of my life trying to do what all the journalists are now celebrating.”
It’s not surprising that O’Keefe feels that way, but he shouldn’t. His outfit does not do the “precise thing” that the anonymous Romney videographer did before giving the video to Mother Jones. O’Keefe’s sting operations involved elaborate ruses meant to intentionally deceive his targets. He and his operatives have donned costumes and assumed invented back stories to pretend to be pimps, telephone workers and even Attorney General Eric Holder. The whole idea is to actively dupe the target into doing something that would not happen if the O’Keefe operative were not there (one scheme involved trying to seduce a CNN producer onto a yacht filled with sex toys).
Meanwhile, there was none of this kind of deception in the Romney video. Someone merely passively recorded remarks that would have been said regardless of whether the person was there or not. The only deception that may have occurred (we don’t know) is at the door when the person entered the fundraiser. To use a trite metaphor, the Romney leaker merely recorded a tree falling in the forest, whereas O’Keefe pushed the tree over. It’s the difference between a cop catching a criminal in the act of robbing a house and entrapment. There’s a reason entrapment is illegal.