James O'Keefe Wins Lawsuit Brought by Project Veritas

James O'Keefe, who founded Project Veritas, speaks at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on March 1, 2019. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a directed verdict on July 30 in favor of James O’Keefe, the defendant in a legal action brought by Project Veritas, the company he founded and led as CEO until his termination by its board in May 2023.

The judge also rejected the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction against O'Keefe.

O’Keefe had faced allegations of breaching his fiduciary duty according to his employment contract, as well as violating his agreement by forming a rival media outlet just before his termination and making use of the Project Veritas donor network to support his new venture.

“The judge found that the primary restrictive covenant, the donor nonsolicitation provision, was irreparably over-broad,” O'Keefe’s lawyer, Jeff Childers, said in a text to The Epoch Times. “The donor restriction and James’s employment agreement had no time limit or geographic limit, and it encompasses donors whom Project Veritas was legally prohibited from soliciting.

“The second big problem for Project Veritas is that they were unwilling to put their donor list in evidence.”

On Feb. 17, 2023, O’Keefe founded O’Keefe Media Group. On April 24, 2023, He was formally removed from the board of Project Veritas, and on May 15, 2023, the company fired him, according to the complaint.

He maintains that he asked board members to resign and that when the board did not cooperate, he decided to leave the company, in keeping with a provision of the employment agreement.

A co-defendant, Anthony Iatrapoulos, was also accused of a breach of contract.

“It remains unclear why the organization I founded, 18 months later after they fired me, for reasons that never made sense to anybody, is wasting their donors’ resources on attempting to sue me (and losing),” he wrote in a post on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 31, which quickly racked up millions of views.

“The powers that be try everything they can to shut me up and shut me down, but I will never surrender so long as you have my back.”

Conflicting Claims

Founded in 2010, Project Veritas bills itself as an organization dedicated to investigative journalism. Its website states that it exposes “corruption in government, media, big tech, politics, education, and beyond through undercover video.”

The website sets forth an agenda based on the aggressive defense of freedom of speech and freedom of the media. The company’s primary modus operandi is to use recording devices surreptitiously during conversations with members of organizations or government agencies, in the hope of catching statements or comments that would reveal undisclosed agendas to the public.

Project Veritas became the subject of a Department of Justice investigation in 2021 over the publication of a diary—shortly before the 2020 presidential election—that belonged to the daughter of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The company’s website acknowledges that Project Veritas “parted with” its founder in 2023 and presents a chronology and series of claims by O’Keefe that it says are false.

In the latter section, Project Veritas contradicts his claim that it “ousted” him for releasing a story about the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer. The company also disputes his assertion that he did not make use of company expense policies to help cover a deposit for his wedding.

The complaint, filed on May 31, 2023, outlined numerous alleged violations of company policy and instances of questionable judgment that the plaintiffs say triggered disciplinary actions against O’Keefe.

Moreover, it alleged that he badmouthed Project Veritas to the media and suggested that it had forced him out over the Pfizer story and other illegitimate reasons.

O’Keefe’s lawyers, from the Florida-based firm Childers Law, successfully argued against the allegations.

Representatives for Project Veritas did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.