 Dear Ruth,
This week is the one-year anniversary of Matt Tyrmand and his friend Dan Strack leading a 6-hour Maoist "struggle session"-style board meeting flogging me for taking SUVs to meetings, stealing pregnant lady's sandwiches, and, amongst other things, claiming I'm a terrible leader. I have a recording of that meeting that I never released.
Matt Tyrmand said Project Veritas didn't need James O'Keefe anymore and would be fine without him. That, along with his statement, "You didn't build that, your employees did," sounded right out of the Labor theory of value, one of the pillars of Marxism. He seemed to want the farm without the farmer or the golden eggs without the goose that produced them. This is a common problem with nonprofits in general. Nobody owns anything; therefore, no good deed goes unpunished - if you have the wrong people involved.
My main concern in the board meeting one year ago tonight, while I sat there quietly being flogged for hours, was indemnifying our journalists because I knew the organization would run out of money if they voted me out. That action would leave our journalists, who needed defending, hung out to dry. The ongoing lawsuits affected 1st and 4th Amendment principles, particularly unconstitutional FBI raids and accompanying search warrants. I never settle lawsuits on principle because I refuse to bear false witness on the 1st amendment and choose the challenging, expensive route of dying on every 1st amendment hill. I can only do this by making the final decisions about raising and apportioning money to litigation. Our cases remain in the circuit courts, with some inevitably bound for the Supreme Court. Since making these final decisions and having the backs of our journalists is central to the sanctity and integrity of the journalism itself, my journalism and being the CEO and final decision-maker are inextricably linked.
So, I had no choice but to ask the board to resign. They refused. They also refused to consider or even fathom the indemnification issue. The "struggle session" indicated they weren't even interested in dialogue. They informed me I needed to take my lashings and feel remorseful. The board eventually resigned months later, anyway, after they spent millions of dollars and ran out of money. It wasn't until then that they started to confront the indemnification issue (you can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality) and began to send out emails asking their audience to pay the legal bills of those raided. Then, to the shock of the few remaining Project Veritas staff, leadership used the little money they raised from the fundraising emails not to support legal defense but to pay themselves. This irresponsible conduct was so unconscionable that it led to their own lawyer's resignation.
After being fired, I had the impossible task of somehow raising funds to pay Project Veritas journalists' legal bills while starting a new venture (OMG - O'Keefe Media Group) from scratch and with absolutely no infrastructure. If that wasn't impossible enough, Project Veritas - the company I founded- sued me and asked a Federal Judge in New York to issue an injunction to stop me from working. Now, things started to seem demonic.
This led most of Project Veritas' donors and audience to believe the worst-case scenario - that people were compromised, pinched, or worse. While that is certainly possible, I don't know that to be true. However, the timing did provide undeniable circumstantial evidence. What did Matt Tyrmand, Dan Strack, George Skakel, John Garvey, and Joe Barton think people would be going to assume after taking such a drastic action of 'indefinitely suspending" James O'Keefe only a week after the Pfizer story?
Donors and the audience were going to conclude that the Project Veritas Board was evil, stupid, or compromised.
Then, in a late May board meeting, a day after Dan Strack quit, there was a stand-off where staff demanded Matt Tyrmand resign after he said he wanted to “carve out James heart and eat it in front of him." I have a recording of that meeting and have not released it. George Skakel, previously an ally of Tyrmand, wrote a letter demanding Tyrmand resign or be fired. Tyrmand resigned in July and promised that dirt on James O'Keefe would come out to the media. Under his brief leadership, Matt Tyrmand managed to burn through the $10 million I raised before being fired. After I left, almost nothing was raised, and donors demanded their money back. Matt also hired a new CEO who fired the entire staff before she, too, quit.
Coincidentally, there was a police report filed over stolen checks around the time that happened, and people are still trying to get to the bottom of that.
Over the last year, Matt Tyrmand has sent pornographic posts and sexually harassing text messages that are so obscene I can’t post them or describe them here without the risk of being banned on this platform. I still do not understand why a person would be compelled to do that.
Matt Tyrmand’s initial strategy, when asked by people what he was thinking, was the somewhat effective "Adam Schiff approach" -“James has done something terrible, but I can't tell you what it is. It will come out later." This approach was used on Trump regarding Russia by Congressman Schiff. In my case, it worked on some people until they learned that Matt had already released everything he had. Whatever he knew, he would leak and share immediately. To this day, the standard response from those responsible for the destruction of Project Veritas is, "You don't know what you're talking about." When asked what they mean, no new justification or evidence is given. All that is provided are insults, pornographic images, and slurs. I have hundreds of these communications saved from some former employees and board members who often use anonymous phone numbers and X accounts.
I get asked every day why all of this happened.
Simply…Why?
Seven years ago, an advisor closely witnessed Matt Tyrmand’s behavior alongside me while we were on his boat. One day, the advisor pulled me aside and warned me that Tyrmand "wants to be you, James. He's jealous of you." Looking back, I was oblivious to it, and the events described above would have been inconceivable in my mind back then. Again, I was raised to believe in the best in people. Someone taking a more Hobbesian approach to human nature would not have founded Project Veritas or chosen my path.
The lesson here is how jealousy and envy can destroy a man in the worst way and destroy organizations and even movements. It is a disease in our politics, institutions, economics, and humanity. Envy is the root of all socialism. Envy has led to death and destruction throughout the 20th century. Envy is inherent in human nature and one of the things we fight against.
It is a spiritual battle, a tale as old as time.
This was the anniversary of that fateful board meeting when I was escorted out of the building in tears, a building that my sister, an architect, helped me construct and design back in 2015. A building that was flooded and destroyed and had to be rebuilt again back in 2021 in the face of constant defamation, raids, and lawsuits. Things can be destroyed in a moment. It takes so much time to build.
But I am grateful to have the overwhelming toxicity entirely removed from my life. The cancer is all gone. I am liberated now. My greatest mistake was not firing Dan Strack immediately when he told me in the Summer of 2022 that he would not follow my lead. I commit to you, my audience, to never make that mistake again.
There is more to say, but at the moment, I have more pressing things to do, like producing our story for Wednesday about yet another institution we infiltrated. Footage you wouldn't believe unless you saw.
And see it you will, 4 pm - 6 pm, every Wednesday, "ON THE INSIDE w/ James O'Keefe"…Tune in then, and any support you can offer to continue our mission is, as always, greatly appreciated.
In Truth,
James O’Keefe
Founder and CEO
O'Keefe Media Group
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