A judge has completely vindicated James O’Keefe and Project Veritas from a defamation lawsuit by a Union teacher from 2016.
It’s a complete and total victory, not just for O’Keefe, but for their methods as well.
He explains below:
Here’s a few tweets O’Keefe put out on this, noting that the judge found that his videos were NOT deceptively edited, as the media likes to say, and were NOT out of context.
HUGE FEDERAL COURT victory for @project_veritas – winning defamation case brought against us by a union president who bragged about verbal abuse of students and said we defamed him. We spent $350k on case, could have settled – BUT WE WILL NEVER SETTLE frivolous attacks! pic.twitter.com/NczGt2uwwX
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 17, 2019
The federal judge ruled that the videos were real, and depicted Wentz’ statements accurately. This is crucial – for defamation claim you need to prove substance of publication was false – and @Project_Veritas publishes only video evidence – which is absolutely real and proper. pic.twitter.com/rTX6lbhVI6
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 17, 2019
The judge emphatically ruled that the videos were NOT deceptively edited or otherwise sequenced out of context. All journalism is edited. And Veritas’ videos are always in context. This is devastating to our critics who think standard video editing is morally reprehensible. pic.twitter.com/NsSgoaLCZo
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 17, 2019
The judge also ruled that Project Veritas did NOT violate any supposed reasonable expectation of privacy. There must be a societal recognition that the privacy expectation is reasonable (State v Smith). Wentz was not just in the bar he was AT the bar, speaking loudly. pic.twitter.com/I3YIBfW1Ok
— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) April 17, 2019
O’Keefe says he spent $350k on this lawsuit. I was hoping the judge would have forced the Union teacher to pay for this since he lost badly, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. But O’Keefe does say they were able to raise the money, so that’s good.