Project Veritas Action released a video on Tuesday that appeared to show senior officials on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign violating finance laws by accepting money from a foreign national.
The footage captured by Veritas shows a Canadian citizen approaching Molly Barker and Erin Tibe, respectively the director of marketing and the financial compliance manager for the campaign, and attempting to exchange cash for campaign paraphernalia. After the campaign officials initially decline to accept the contribution, an undercover Project Veritas staffer standing nearby offers to take the cash and conduct the exchange on behalf of the Canadian. Barker and Tibe accept the offer.
The staffer gave the campaign $75 for the goods in all, $40 of which came from the Canadian national. Though the amount was small, it violated federal laws that prevent campaigns from accepting funds from foreign nationals. The Federal Election Campaign Act “prohibits any foreign national from contributing, donating or spending funds in connection with any federal, state, or local election in the United States, either directly or indirectly.”
Though Democrats were quick to marginalize the incident as insignificant, Veritas President James O’Keefe told the Washington Examiner that it was symptomatic of broader problems with the Clinton campaign. “It’s sort of like a disease,” he said. “It’s the attitude towards the law, and the willingness to disregard the law.”
Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton spokesman, tried to turn attention back to Project Veritas. “Our staffers understand and follow the law, as demonstrated even in their selectively edited video,” Ferguson told the New York Times. “Project Veritas, on the other hand, has been caught trying to commit fraud, falsify identities and break campaign finance law — not surprising, given that their founder has already been convicted for efforts like this.”
O’Keefe pleaded guilty in 2010 to posing as a repairman during an attempted sting on former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office.
Others tried to play up the undercover staffer’s role in the violation of campaign finance laws. MSNBC reporter Alex Seitz-Wald protested on Twitter, saying, “James O’Keefe says holds himself to same standard as [the mainstream media], but won’t reveal [the] name” of the undercover staff member.
Veritas tends to keep the identities of its operatives confidential in order to prevent retaliation. After the group produced one video that showed O’Keefe openly crossing the U.S.-Mexico border dressed as Osama bin Laden, O’Keefe found himself permanently flagged by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for interrogation whenever he crosses the U.S. border. One border agent told O’Keefe that the department’s leaders had put a “hit on you.”
In spite of accusations of partisanship, O’Keefe said his group will release more videos showing violations committed by the campaigns of candidates in both parties. However, in light of the resistance by Democrats and some in the media to acknowledge wrongdoing on the part of Clinton’s campaign, his group may be especially interested in prioritizing her misdeeds.
“We release videos based on what the media reaction is,” O’Keefe said. “If the media says, this is an isolated incident, I’ll release another one of the same thing. If the media says, this is all you’ve got, you don’t have any other types of illegality, I’ll release a different topic.”
Referring to Clinton’s campaign, O’Keefe emphasized his belief that problems were on an organizational level rather than an individual one. “I can you tell you right now it’s not isolated because there’s more. And that’s something that is demonstrated in the next video. We’ll be releasing these one at a time,” he added.
“Maybe they’ll fire these people, maybe they’ll clean up their act. I hope they continue attacking me because that’ll definitely make the videos more viral,” he said.
