Live from Music Row, Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed top gov tracker and One America News national political correspondent, Neil W. McCabe to the newsmaker line to comment on James O’Keefe’s departure from Project Veritas and newly announced GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s chances.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line right now, is our good friend, top gov tracker, and national political correspondent with One American News Network, Neil W. McCabe. Good morning, Neil.
McCabe: Hey, guys. Good to be with you.
Leahy: Neil, Crom has a question for you.
Carmichael: Neil, on Project Veritas, what will happen with Project Veritas without James O’Keefe?
McCabe: You have to understand that James is the founder and the CEO. He created it to be a home for himself and other undercover journalists, people who wanted to expose corruption. And in the back of his head, he always wanted it to be something that would survive him.
And I’m not sure that this is how he planned it. But there are people there who are committed to the mission. You have trained undercover journalists. You have fantastic cameramen and editors. You have people who are experienced with how to use hidden cameras and everything like that.
Where do those guys go? Maybe some of them will join James and whatever venture he’s going to do. But there are people inside Project Veritas who say, we’ll just carry on the mission. Project Veritas was bigger than James. Okay.
Carmichael: My sense of it, and obviously I’m wrong, my sense of it was it was kind of a handful of people who kind of almost went around with James O’Keefe, who was kind of one of the undercover people. And I’m sure that’s how it started because I remember some very early Project Veritas, and it was James O’Keefe. Generally, it was James O’Keefe and one particular lady. What you’re saying is that in recent years, it’s gotten a lot bigger than my understanding.
McCabe: Right. So in 2009, the ACORN expose was James and Hannah Giles. But that was not Project Veritas. Project Veritas was started in 2011 because he felt exposed as a single guy, sort of basically freelancing and making the stuff himself.
He needed some organization, some stability, some structure, and that’s what he built. But there’s probably, I don’t know, 10-15 undercover journalists across the country who do various things. Many of them will probably want to continue doing what they do.
Carmichael: So there will be somebody, and they may have already named the person, James O’Keefe has been removed as CEO. Is that correct?
McCabe: I don’t know if removed is the word I would use. He was put on ice while the board did an investigation, and then he read that letter, which they took as a resignation letter. He packed up his stuff and walked out the door. The board hadn’t fired James.
In fact, the office was closed on President’s Day. There was supposed to be a board meeting Tuesday where things might be resolved and he basically used his FOB to get into the office and pack up his stuff and leave.
Carmichael: Then obviously they haven’t named a new CEO.
McCabe: Not that I know.
Leahy: We’ll see how that all plays out. Neil, you broke that story, by the way. Congratulations on that. Now let’s talk about the story that we knew about that was going to happen, that I invited you to watch Tucker last night. Our buddy Vivek Ramaswamy has announced his candidacy for president. What’s your take on Vivek in 2024 as a GOP candidate?
McCabe: I think that it is absolutely stunning that this guy has come onto the scene the way he has. And when he talks about woke capital, woke institutions, he’s talking as someone who saw it from the inside. And in a lot of ways, it sort of dovetails with what James and Project Veritas were doing.
I worked at Veritas, and so James would tell me that, in essence, what he’s trying to do is expose the private truth hidden by the public lie. And so a lot of these companies don’t really tell you what they’re up to and what Vivek is doing and others are doing, but certainly, it’s his running for president.
And I saw him on Tucker last night. The guy was phenomenal. I think Tucker was really impressed. I think Tucker told him he was really impressed. And what he’s doing is he’s saying, hey, whatever you’ve been told, put it to the side. This is what’s going on in the institutions. Financial, education, charity, and religion, everything that’s going on inside is working against you.
Leahy: Vivek is going to be out in Iowa today. Our own Matt Kittle with The Iowa Star is going to be with him and get some exclusive interviews on-site in Antonio, Iowa, and Des Moines, and a couple of the suburbs there. How do you think this will shake out in reality?
What are Ramaswamy’s chances now that former President Trump has announced, Nikki Haley has announced rumors that DeSantis may get in? How does this shake up, if at all, the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race?
McCabe: We’ll have to see if these presidential primaries follow the script that’s been sort of in place since 1972, 1976. Will Iowa and New Hampshire really be deciding what’s going on? The Trump campaign is focusing on South Carolina. It’s a winner take all state with 50 delegates, and it’s really the most important state because it’s a big conservative state with a lot of very interesting people in that state in South Carolina.
New Hampshire is kind of a wild card for Trump. And I think Iowa is a very difficult state to organize. And I’m sure Mr. Kittle learned very quickly that Iowa is, well he lives there.
Leahy: He lives in Des Moines.
McCabe: He knows that it is cold, and he knows that everything is 100 miles away, and these caucuses are held in, like, barns, and toolsheds.
Leahy: I’ve been to one, Neil, and you’re quite right. (Chuckles)
McCabe: Iowa is a tough row to hoe. And so it’ll also be interesting to see what happens in Iowa since they kneecapped Steve King, the congressman from the northeast corner of Iowa who was sort of a kingmaker in Iowa, and of course, The New York Times and Kevin McCarthy torpedoed him and he was very influential. And he’s frankly the reason why Ted Cruz won Iowa in 2016.
Leahy: Good point.
McCabe: But of course, he won Iowa but didn’t become president.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “James O’Keefe” by James O’Keefe.
Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Aaron Gulbransen in studio to comment on James O’Keefe’s recent departure from successful Project Veritas.
Leahy: In studio, the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report, Aaron Gulbransen. Aaron, our good friend Neil W. McCabe, who’s now at One American News Network but was for a couple of years our national political editor at The Tennessee Star broke a story yesterday about the resignation of James O’Keefe as the head of Project Veritas, the organization that he, in essence, kind of created 13 years ago. What do you make of that messy situation?
Gulbransen: First of all, congratulations to Neil for breaking the story. It was a fun period of time to work with him last year, but I think Project Veritas now has sunk. Clearly, the board of directors, or at least a faction of them, had issues with James O’Keefe, who’s a rock star in the conservative movement.
I would ascribe some of those issues to jealousy. I think if you look at some of the claims they’ve been making, you could go to that and go, oh, you mean, so you put on one heck of a show at a previous CPAC event or a few different events. It’s one of those things.
I think Project Veritas as an organization without James O’Keefe is kind of like, I don’t know, I can’t even think of it. It would be like Donald Trump’s organization without Donald Trump. It’s not going anywhere. So there you go.
Leahy: He’s an interesting fellow. And one of the things that I think was very difficult for James O’Keefe, you may recall back in 2010 when he was starting doing these investigations, there was how can we describe this other than a hair-brained scheme by some enthusiastic young folks that were trying to get an undercover video. And they were in New Orleans, and I can’t remember what it was, but they posed as, like, telephone repair people. Remember that?
Gulbransen: I do.
Leahy: And then they were arrested, and everything about it was stupid. And he got involved in that. He was part of those guys. And anyways, an overenthusiastic person kind of talked him into it and it got out of control. Anyways, he ended up pleading no contest to some kind of trespassing thing, and that has haunted him, I think, ever since.
But he’s done some great work. I think the challenge have been, and there are reports that he’s a difficult person to work with. Now in the media world, if you run a media organization, Aaron, as you know, (Laughter) sometimes people who run media organizations who are conservatives have got to be scrappy.
Sometimes they’re difficult to work with. I know that’s hard for you to imagine, having worked previously as a Tennessee Star political reporter here at The Star News Network. I know you can’t imagine that being the case.
Gulbransen: I can’t imagine it whatsoever. (Leahy laughs) In all fairness, whenever you’re working in an enterprise that requires extremely little sleep, which certainly running a media organization is one of those, and political campaigns are the same way. It is taxing.
And I think you could find situations where everybody is fairly difficult. If you were to compare it to a nine to five where you get to leave, and you don’t get to start working until nine, and you’re not thinking of work until nine, and then you leave everything on the table at five.
Leahy: Where does this go now? To me, I think he’s raised like $25 million a year for that. But without him raising money, there is no Project Veritas, in my view. Your thoughts?
Gulbransen: I think they are sunk, and I think he’s going to take the opportunity to reinvent himself again after this. We’ll see what he does. He might hook up with a much larger enterprise. We’ll see.
Leahy: I don’t think so. I think he’s going to do James O’Keefe 2.0. That would be my guess. We’ll see how it all plays out. But he was born to do this kind of thing. But it is difficult to build a conservative media organization in this landscape. That I can tell you from personal experience. You have to be dogged in your effort.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “James O’Keefe” by James O’Keefe.
Live from Music Row Wednesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –host Leahy welcomed Project Veritas’s Managing Editor Nick Givas to the newsmakers line to discuss the recent whistleblower account of Fox 26 putting corporate sponsors and CEO mission over their viewership.
Leahy: We are joined now on our newsmaker line by Nick Givas with Project Veritas. Good morning, Nick.
Givas: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Leahy: It’s been a busy day for you. There was a report about a Houston local television news reporter by the name of Ivory Hecker. On Monday she announced on air that she’s going to share secret recordings of Fox News with Project Veritas. She was with Fox station KRIV in Houston. Tell us what’s happened since that announcement.
Givas: Well, as you said, Ivory was suspended after she announced on air that she come forward to Project Veritas. And then following that as a live on-air that suspension, she was seemingly let go by the network or excuse me, by the affiliate Fox 26. And this is after she claimed that there were acts of “corruption” within the Houston affiliate.
And she felt that the actions were not, I guess, honoring real journalism. And she claimed that leadership prioritized corporate interest over that of the viewer. It shouldn’t shock a lot of people. But it’s certainly surprising how many of the station’s staff said these things so nonchalantly on camera.
Leahy: Now, did she bring these secret recordings to Project Veritas?
Givas: Yes, she did. She stepped forward as a whistleblower and she obtained recordings of her superiors telling her to prioritize the opinion of the station’s general manager, the company CEO, and basically anything but that of the audience.
And her quote was, ‘What’s happening within Fox Corp. is an operation of prioritizing corporate interest over the viewers’ interest, therefore operating in a deceptive way.’ And she felt that deception in her words and that corruption was enough to push her conscience to push her to come forward.
Leahy: Will Project Veritas be sharing these recordings with us publicly?
Givas: Yeah, they’ve come out. Actually, we did release the story. It is out live on projectveritas.com and you can follow James O’Keefe on Telegram. It’s one of his main social media hubs.
We are also on Instagram. And you can read all of these quotes. You can read everything from what I just said about the viewers and the GM and the CEO being the main audience to them telling her to cease and desist as a quote posting about hydroxychloroquine, the COVID drug on social media.
They really came after here on quite a few issues it seems just because they didn’t like the outcome.
Leahy: Yeah, there it is. Projectveritas.com. I can see it right now. Fox 26 TV reporter tells all to James O’Keefe. Tell our listing audience if you would Nick a little bit about Project Veritas and how I got started, James O’Keefe, and when you joined them, and what your role is there at Project Veritas.
Givas: Sure. I officially joined in March. I unofficially began working with them in January at the beginning of the year. And as managing editor of the newsroom, I help with production.
I help with recruitment of people as far as whistleblowers. I help with communications. I do interviews such as these. I go on TV, on radio, and talk to people like yourself about people such as Ivory that come out of the shadows and that risk everything to tell us their story because they trust us with it given the sailings of the mainstream media and a lot of other media outlets.
Not only to keep the identity of the person secret or to keep their story, intact but to tell the full truth on their behalf. And that’s what I try to do in my role. As far as Project Veritas itself, it started about 11 years ago now I believe. 2010 or 2011 was the official launch date. Our CEO, James O’Keefe has been muckraking ever since.
Leahy: He sure has. (Laughter)
Givas: And everybody sees it.
Leahy: Oh, there’s James O’Keefe. Let me head from the hills. I don’t want to say something that he’s going to actually report. Now, is it true that James O’Keefe and Project Veritas have been banned by Google-owned YouTube?
Givas: YouTube, I can’t speak to that. I believe we still are active on YouTube, but we were, in fact, banned from Twitter.
Leahy: Twitter, I mixed up these oligopolies. Yes, it was Twitter. Thanks for that correction.
Givas: It’s hard to tell. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them one from the other ones who I don’t blame you. We were kicked off Twitter as well as Jame’s personal account. I think, ridiculous reasons.
And firstly, the Project Veritas account was banned because they claimed we didn’t blur out a house number, even though a similar CNN video still stands today with an unblurred house number. And the reason they gave her banning James’s personal Twitter account was ridiculous.
They claimed he operated multiple accounts to magnify his reach, and he’s maintained this day that he’s never created fake accounts on that platform. I don’t think he has time. I’ve seen the man’s schedule. It’s not a possibility.
Leahy: He is a pretty busy guy, I’ll tell you that. That’s for sure.
Givas: It’s ridiculous. We were booted it seemingly because we released the tapes on CNN and they didn’t like the narrative and we were shut down. That’s our feeling on it. And that’s what we’re going to court for.
Leahy: What’s interesting about that, the CNN tapes, you got high level of a producer there admitting that this was just basically a Jeff Zucker vendetta to bring down President Donald Trump. That’s all it was. That’s all it is basically.
Givas: They called it propaganda and that’s frightening. And it’s not even the people a lot of people aren’t smart enough to understand this is going. It’s to see people on camera so calmly explained these things that shouldn’t be done so coldly.
These are things that should be taken into account and talked about and brought out into the light in the open. And yet here they are shrouded in darkness. And yet people are so easygoing about it when they don’t think they’re being watched, or they don’t think they are on camera.
Leahy: So what’s next for that Houston, Texas, television news reporter, Ivory Hecker? Is she currently employed? What’s her career look like?
Givas: Fox 26 is letting her go or in the process of severing her from Fox 26. Again, it was very confusing. They had asked her to turn in her equipment, but they were being very slow to kind of officially push the issue over the edge and cut her from the staff.
But she’s going to become an independent journalist no matter what happens here officially. At the end of the day, she wants to go and go chase on stories that don’t have to do with a corporate network.
Leahy: I have a message. Would you deliver a message to Ivory Hecker?
Givas: I’ll do my best. What do you have for her?
Leahy: Ivory, we’re hiring at the Star News Network, and we would love to talk to you.
Givas: Yeah, I don’t mind passing that message along.
Leahy: And by the way, my email address is simply michaelpatrickleahy@gmail.com. And maybe if you could stay after the break, you could give us some contact information to our producer Scooter so we can connect with Ivory. We would love to talk to her about working with the ever-expanding Star News Network.
Givas: I’m happy to do that. And I’m sure even if just to have the contact and touch base, she’d be interested to talk to you. So I’m more than happy to pass that on.
Leahy: Terrific. Nick Givas with Project Veritas. Thanks so much for joining us today.
Givas: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Listen to the second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Ivory Hecker” by Ivory Hecker.
Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles in the studio to discuss the Project Veritas Facebook whistleblower and the companies power as larger than many nations.
Leahy: All-star panelist, Roger Simon, Sr. Editor-at-Large with The Epoch Times and our good friend Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles. Andy, breaking story eight hours ago, James O’Keefe with Project Veritas, released documents and audio from Facebook. They’re going to start censoring people for vaccine hesitancy. Can you believe that?
Ogles: If you look at what Florida’s done in the bill that they’ve passed, this is akin to this social score.
Simon: In China.
Ogles: So to back up just a moment, Florida has a state legislator down there who came up with this tech censorship bill.
Leahy: Randy Fine. He’s been on our show. Great guy.
Ogles: Yes. And so I’m a fellow with Club for Growth. He is as well.
Leahy: Great minds think alike.
Ogles: Well, I guess, but it was one of those that we were seeing this coming. And so I reached out to the governor, the lieutenant governor, and the Speaker of the House. I sent them this legislation.
I implored them to do the same thing in the state of Tennessee. And they balked. And now we have a situation where you’ve got James O’Keefe unveiling and having actual proof that what we were warning people about is happening.
Simon: I can tell you why they balked. And that’s really horrible. The reason they balked is so many of our politicians are being fed money by Facebook and everybody.
Ogles: We recruited Facebook to come here.
Simon: So they’re bought and paid for, and we’re all headed to be Communist Chinese, not good Chinese. So it’s a very bad situation. And the governor ought to straighten up and fly right as the song goes.
Leahy: So here’s the actual quote. Based on the vaccine hesitancy score, we will demote or leave the comment alone one whistleblower at Facebook said.’ Unbelievable. So if you have a good vaccine, hesitancy score that is that you’re not hesitant to take the vaccine they’ll leave it alone.
Simon: That’s right.
Leahy: Like Senator Rand Paul. Senator Rand Paul has made the personal decision that he’s not going to take the vaccine. And so they will demote any of his comments at Facebook using this algorithm.
Ogles: Well, I think a lot of us suspected that Facebook was doing this, but now you have quantifiable proof that they are doing it. And again, either the fact that as in China that we’re being assigned a number, a score, and it is ranking our worthiness to be on their platform.
And some might say that this tech censorship bill smacks into the freedom of freedom of speech from the business perspective, but we’ve stepped in with antitrust laws to break up this type of behavior.
Leahy: Let me get the exact quote so you know exactly what happened. Fox News last night. ‘Investigative journalist James O’Keefe reacted on Hannity Monday to exclusive documents and interviews that were provided to his Project Veritas organization by two Facebook whistleblowers that purport to show the social media giant is using an algorithm to target users who disseminate messaging that runs counter to the company’s political ideology.’
O’Keefe told Hannity that Facebook initiated a beta test for the algorithm that classifies some users under two incremental tiers of what they dub vaccine hesitancy or your VH score without the user’s knowledge.
Based on that VH score, we will demote or leave the comment alone, depending upon the content within the comment. That’s what the Whistleblower said. Roger?
Simon: Speaking to what Andy said, a lot of people consider themselves a libertarian or conservative, complaining we shouldn’t be messing with private corporations. They are able to do what they want.
But no one ever conceived of private corporations like Facebook and Google Alphabet in the days that this kind of legislation was written. They are more powerful than 95 percent of nations. I would say they’re more powerful in every nation, but the USA in China.
Leahy: Roger, what’s your VH score? Has Facebook given you your score?
Simon: I’ll tell you, I’m going to be honest about it. I actually took the vaccine, and the reason I took the vaccine is I travel for work all the time and was afraid they wouldn’t let me on planes. And now I’m saying, well, I was a chicken and I did it, but my reason for doing it is probably accurate.
Leahy: Well, now I’ve taken the vaccines. My personal thing is I’m 66. I’m in that zone. The danger zone, if you will.
Simon: You’re looking good.
Leahy: My inner 46 says thank you, Roger, for that. And I looked at the evidence, and to me, there’s enough evidence to say, okay, well, it’s not going to hurt me, and it’s going to help me.
That was my personal choice, Senator Rand Paul, different choice. If you’re pregnant, if you’re a woman and pregnant, you may have a different choice.
Ogles: Well, I’m in the Rand Paul camp. I’ve not gotten the vaccine. I have no intentions of getting the vaccine. And that’s my choice.
Leahy: That’s your choice, because I don’t know your personal circumstances.
Ogles: That’s right.
Leahy: That’s for you to decide. Not for me, not for Roger and certainly not Facebook.
Simon: Well, you know, I feel sorry for it, because he won’t be able to go to Paris next year. But maybe he doesn’t want to go to Paris.
Leahy: Let me correct that. He may be able to go to Paris, Tennessee.
Ogles: Well, and let me tell you, over the next year, I plan on visiting Paris and lots of places in Tennessee, so it’s going to be a busy keep you busy.
Leahy: That’s good. But, look, this is very dangerous, very dangerous. And I do think here’s a bit of the problem. We have antitrust laws that could be used by the Department of Justice, but Merrick Garland isn’t going to use them. Nor, by the way, did Bill Barr.
Simon: No.
Leahy: A big disappointment.
Simon: H.L. Mencken again, it’s about the money.
Leahy: It is about the money.
Simon: I mean, that’s the scary part about it. People are so easily bought.
Ogles: Well, when going back to that quote and this VH score, what’s frightening about this or concerning is that this is a beta test of an algorithm that is going to be applied in a much broader use and broader function.
Simon: Or has been already.
Leahy: We don’t know.
Ogles: And so, again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. And again, that is why I begged the governor. I held a press conference. I sent a letter. I sent the actual piece of legislation that Florida passed and said, we’ve got to do this in Tennessee to protect freedom of speech and I got crickets.
I got nothing in response. And here we are, now we have the proof. And I hate to say it, but I told you so we saw this coming. And once again, we’ve done nothing about it.
Leahy: And that is, I think, a little bit of the problem here in Tennessee.
Simon: A little bit? It’s the biggest problem that may be facing America in the next 50 years.
Leahy: But in particular in Tennessee because Maury County in Tennessee, where our friend Andy Ogles is the Mayor there.
Simon: The one Tennessee free zone.
Leahy: It’s a bastion of freedom.
Simon: Tennessee should be a bastion of freedom. I mean, it’s one of the that’s interesting about it is being an immigrant here from California for three years now duration. I came thinking it was going to be pure red.
And actually, it’s one of the reddest states, and at the same time, the government is not as red as the people. It’s very weird situation that we have, whereas in Florida, the government seems to be more red than the people. I mean, we should be out front on these things rather than lagging behind.
Ogles: You look at the lawsuit in Texas not to get us off of this vaccine score thing from Facebook because it’s so important and it needs to be discussed, and we need to be shouting from the rooftops.
But that lawsuit against the government on election integrity. Tennessee, by the time we signed on to the amicus brief, we were like 16th or 17th, the decision had been made. The outcome was predetermined. So, again, we were following instead of leading. And we’re one of the reddest states in the country.
Simon: The politicians here should be in the front because they have nothing to lose. They got the people behind them.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Andrew Ogles” by Andrew Ogles and photo “Roger Simon” by Roger Simon.
Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. –host Leahy welcomed Project Veritas’s Managing Editor Nick Givas to the newsmakers line to talk about their recent Twitter ban after releasing a video exposing CNN’s technical director brag about rigging and manipulating its viewers against Trump.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker lined by Nick Givas, the Managing Editor of Project Veritas. Nick, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Givas: All right. Thanks for having me.
Leahy: So James O’Keefe has been banned from Twitter one day after your stunning expose of the technical director of CNN who basically said what everybody knew that they were trying to defeat Donald Trump. Will James O’Keefe be suing Twitter and CNN, as some reports say?
Givas: Yes, it appears that we are going to go forward and seek our remedy in court. That’ll play out, obviously over the weeks and months ahead. But it appears that we’re going to go on offense and forge ahead with that.
Leahy: Now, James O’Keefe’s and the Project Veritas Twitter account had what, one and a half million followers?
Givas: The Veritas account may have. That was suspended before my time in joining the group. But James’s personal account was close to a million followers and was over 900,000.
Leahy: Wow. And so it looks to me like if Twitter finds a conservative that they don’t like, they just ban them. What on earth is going on with Twitter?
Givas: I can only speculate into the mind of what Jack Dorsey is thinking. I do not know. But I can say that for the grace of God and for your listeners because eventually, I believe it seems we’re on a slope or it’s not just conservatives that are going to get banned it’s anyone that gets in the way of a narrative that gets in the way that Twitter doesn’t like. you don’t have to be conservative. It could be anyone.
Carmichael: Naomi Wolf certainly is not a conservative and she was banned from Twitter.
Leahy: Yes. She has been.
Carmichael: Now, quick question. You said that you think you’re going to also in addition to suing Twitter sue CNN. What is the basis? I know that you all have exposed CNN.
Givas: Defamatory statements are the basis and I’ll leave it at that.
Carmichael: Okay, so CNN has made statements that you all believe are defamatory. And is that prior to or after your recent exposure of CNN’s deception?
Givas: I can only say stay tuned. (Leahy laughs)
Leahy: This is a wise man. There is litigation going on.
Givas: Ongoing. Ongoing.
Carmichael: Well, you have many people in your corner on your ongoing litigation. So anyway, good luck to you.
Givas: Thank you, sir. We try for the truth. That’s all we want.
Leahy: The claim by Twitter was that James O’Keefe was using fake Twitter accounts. Is that true, or did they just make that up?
Givas: He tells me no and I’ve seen and experienced nothing like that. I’ve never seen James keep or operate a false account. He says he’s never done that. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was just a reason to throw him off. But again, we’re trying to figure that out. And the answer we were given was very broad and it seemed very random all of a sudden.
As I said, I’ll leave it to the American people. l’ll leave it to them to decide why this happened and the timing. But yes, we’ve come out with three bombshells videos showing a CNN technical director bragging about how the network is propaganda, how it manipulates people, and how it was basically shilling for Black Lives Matter. And then all of a sudden he gets banned.
Carmichael: I found what you all got them to talk about with them exaggerating the numbers on COVID.
Givas: That too. And then saying they’re going to pivot from COVID, and this is Charlie Chester, a technical producer there, claiming the network knew that people are tired of COVID and now they’re going to switch to climate change as if it’s Wheel of Fortune or some game show for them.
Carmichael: For them it is.
Givas: At least Charlie Chester, this director, and his claims that the culture is such. Let’s find out. Let’s see if anyone else is there that wants to come forward and they can send any information to Veritastips@protonmail.com. And if it isn’t just him, more people will come forward. They will and it isn’t the first time.
Leahy: Nick Givas, you’re the managing editor of Project Veritas. What does the managing editor do at Project Veritas?
Givas: Without getting into too much detail I can say that I work with production on videos sometimes. What we’re going to keep and what we’re going to actually publish. Sometimes we get information that might be borderline that we have to decide as a team, are we going to publish this? Is it newsworthy? Is it true?
A part of that includes traveling on the road. Part of it includes talking to find people like yourself and just giving interviews. But people know where we are at as much as we can tell without blowing the cover of our people or interfering with their work. And in addition to that, it’s just anything and everything. I try to just work to help the company as much as I can to expose the truth. And part of that also involves things like this. We’re releasing stories such as this because we feel it’s in the public’s best interest.
Carmichael: I have a question for you that I’m just asking for your best guess if you choose to make a guess. If The New York Times produces 100 different stories and each of those stories is based on an unnamed source, how many of those stories do you think are based on a legitimate source and how many do you think are based on either no source at all or a friend of a friend of a friend who is the so-called unnamed source?
Givas: Well, that’s what we hope to find out with this lawsuit through depositions and discovery. And through this lawsuit, if we’re able to look inside The New York Times for the first time or have them answer honestly perhaps we’ll start to find out how many of those sources were real.
Carmichael: That’s right. You have a lawsuit.
Givas: We do.
Carmichael: What can you tell our listeners, if anything about that lawsuit? Because I know that you won at the New York State Supreme Court.
Givas: Yes we did. We got past the motion to dismiss and that does start to open the other side up to having to become involved in the process. The New York Times responded. We were kind of going back and forth on this so far but we do plan to have depositions, and we will depose members of The New York Times that were involved in this particular story before the court. And after that, I think the public is going to learn quite a bit about a media that they’ve trusted for years that has now decided to go into business for itself and not protecting the people and we are going to show why.
Leahy: The Project Veritas groundbreaking approach to journalism kind of addresses that problem of sort of unnamed sources, because you have pioneered the use of undercover videos. So this technical director, this Chester fellow at CNN, cannot deny what he says, because you got it there right on video.
Givas: There’s power in that. It’s visual. It’s not filtered through a lens or corporate advertisers or someone else’s opinion. It’s right there in black and white. And, yes, there is a certain power to that I think that you don’t get with digital media, or print news, or even cable news.
Carmichael: Didn’t you all win a lawsuit years ago, or somebody sued you, claiming that your method…
Givas: We’ve never lost.
Leahy: Never lost! Nick Givas, Managing Editor of Project Veritas, thanks for that first-hand report of what’s going on with that Twitter ban.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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