James O'Keefe ACORN videos (2009)
What are the ACORN videos?
What are the ACORN videos?
In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for 40 years for persons of low and moderate income.  A Washington Post correspondent reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives", and "Politicians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." ACORN mostly registered people from the Latino and African American communities.  The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). Furthermore, the ACORN employees involved reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, as well as distorted the chronologies. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work.  On April 10, 2012, the political gossip site Wonkette reported that Andrew Breitbart had signed a $120,000 contract for "life rights" by O'Keefe and Giles based on the ACORN videos. The contract was paid in monthly increments of $5,000. Giles ultimately received $32,000 before parting ways with Breitbart over what she described in legal depositions as "a conflict of visions". O'Keefe ultimately received $65,000. CANNOTANSWER
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN),
James Edward O'Keefe III (born June 28, 1984) is an American political activist and provocateur who founded Project Veritas, a far-right activist group that uses deceptive editing techniques to attack mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Both O'Keefe and Project Veritas have produced secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations; the recordings are often selectively edited to misrepresent the context of the conversations and the subjects' responses.

O’Keefe gained national attention for his selectively edited video recordings of workers at Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) offices in 2009, his arrest and guilty plea in 2010 for entering the federal office of then-U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) under false pretenses, and the release of misleading videos of conversations with two high-ranking, now former, NPR executives in 2011.

When his videos – heavily edited to portray ACORN workers seemingly aiding a couple in criminal planning – were publicized, the U.S. Congress voted to freeze funds for the non-profit. The national controversy resulted in the non-profit also losing most of its private funding before investigations of the videos concluded no illegal activity occurred. In March 2010, ACORN was close to bankruptcy and had to close or rename most of its offices. Shortly thereafter, the California State Attorney General's Office and the US Government Accountability Office released their related investigative reports. The Attorney General's Office found that O'Keefe had misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers in California and that the workers had not broken any laws. A preliminary probe by the GAO found that ACORN had managed its federal funds appropriately. One of the fired ACORN workers sued O'Keefe for invasion of privacy; O'Keefe issued an apology and agreed to pay $100,000 in a settlement.

O'Keefe has gained support from right-wing and conservative media and interest groups, as well as the far right. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart commissioned him for the option to publish new videos exclusively on BigGovernment.com.

Early life and education
James Edward O'Keefe III was born in Bergen County, New Jersey, the elder of two children of James, a materials engineer, and Deborah O'Keefe, a physical therapist. He has a younger sister.

O'Keefe grew up in Westwood, New Jersey. His home was politically "conservative but not rigidly so", according to his father. He graduated from Westwood High School, where he showed an early interest in the arts, theater and journalism. He attained Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America. O'Keefe started at Rutgers University in 2002 and majored in philosophy. Beginning in his sophomore year, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column for The Daily Targum, the university's student paper. He left the Targum and founded the Rutgers Centurion, a conservative student paper supported by a $500 "Balance in the Media" grant from The Leadership Institute.

For his first video, he and other Centurion writers met with Rutgers dining staff to demand the banning of the cereal Lucky Charms from dining halls because of its offense to Irish Americans. O'Keefe said the leprechaun mascot presented a stereotype. He intended to have officials lose either way: to appear insensitive to an ethnic group, or to look silly by agreeing to ban Lucky Charms. They expected to be thrown out of school, but the Rutgers official was courteous, took notes, and said their concerns would be considered. Rutgers staff say the cereal was never taken off the menu.

Career
After graduating from Rutgers, O'Keefe worked for a year at the Leadership Institute (LI) in Arlington, Virginia, under media specialist Ben Wetmore, whom O'Keefe calls his mentor. The institute sent him to colleges to train students to start conservative independent newspapers, but, after a year LI officials asked him to leave. According to LI president and founder Morton Blackwell, O'Keefe was "very effective and very enthusiastic" but after a year he was asked to leave because officials felt his activist work threatened the group's nonprofit status by trying to influence legislation.

O'Keefe has produced and distributed secretly recorded and misleadingly edited videos and audio files made during staged encounters with targeted entities or individuals. His work takes the form of undercover stings targeted at liberal groups and politicians. He sought to "embarrass" and "damage" his targets, such as Landrieu and ACORN.

He has sought to maximize publicity by releasing secretly recorded videos over several days or months, often in relation to funding authorizations or significant political actions related to the subject organization. Many videos received widespread media coverage sparking significant reactions, most notably videos of ACORN that resulted in the Congress quickly freezing funds, two executive agencies canceling contracts, and several ACORN workers being fired, and videos of National Public Radio (NPR) executives that led to the resignation of CEO Vivian Schiller, shortly before Congressional funding hearings involving NPR.

In January 2010, O'Keefe began a column on Breitbarts website, BigGovernment.com. Andrew Breitbart stated in an interview that he paid O'Keefe a salary for his "life rights" to gain release of O'Keefe's videos first on his website. In 2010, O'Keefe formed his a new organization, Project Veritas, whose stated mission is "to investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society."

Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from anonymous donations through Donors Trust, a conservative, American nonprofit donor-advised fund, which according to its promotional materials, says that it will "keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or controversial issues." Prominent donors include the Trump Foundation, which, in May 2015, donated $10,000.

O'Keefe is a conservative activist with mainstream conservative pro-market and anti-government views, although he has described himself as a "progressive radical", because he wants to change things, "not conserve them". He considers himself a muckraker.  O'Keefe has expressed admiration for the philosophy of G. K. Chesterton and for a free press.

Major activities

Planned Parenthood recordings (2008)

In 2006, O'Keefe met Lila Rose, the founder of an anti-abortion group on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus. They secretly recorded encounters in Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, in which Rose posed as a 15-year-old girl impregnated by a 23-year-old male. Rose and O'Keefe made two videos incorporating heavily edited versions of the recordings and released them on YouTube. the video omitted the portions of the full conversation in which a Planned Parenthood employee asked Rose to consult her mother about the pregnancy and another employee told Rose, "We have to follow the laws". Rose took down the videos after Planned Parenthood sent her a cease and desist letter in May 2007 asserting that the videos violated California's voice recording laws, which required consent from all recorded parties.

In 2007, O'Keefe phoned several Planned Parenthood clinics and secretly recorded the conversations. He posed as a donor, asking if his donations would be applied to needs of minority women, accompanied by race-related remarks such as "there's way too many black people in Ohio". The recordings portrayed Planned Parenthood clinic workers in six states agreeing to accept his donation under his conditions. After the release of the recordings, African-American leaders called for withdrawal of public financing of the organization. The Idaho clinic responded with an apology for "the manner in which this offensive call was handled". Planned Parenthood issued an official statement emphasizing that "97 percent of its services are focused on providing contraceptives, breast and cervical cancer screenings and sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment — not abortions".

ACORN videos (2009)

In September 2009, O'Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, published edited hidden camera recordings in which Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe as her boyfriend, a law student, in an attempt to elicit damaging responses from employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy organization for people of low and moderate income.

Washington Post correspondents Darryl Fears and Carol D. Leonnig reported that O'Keefe "said he targeted ACORN for the same reasons that the political right does: its massive voter registration drives" and that "[p]oliticians are getting elected single-handedly due to this organization." According to The Washington Post, ACORN registered people mostly from the Latino and African American groups.

The videos were recorded during the summer of 2009 and appeared to show low-level ACORN employees in six cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid detection by authorities of tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. He framed the undercover recordings with a preface of him dressed in a "pimp" outfit, which he also wore in TV media interviews. This gave viewers, including the media, the impression that he had dressed that way when speaking to ACORN workers. However, he actually entered the ACORN offices in conservative street clothes (the sleeve of his dress shirt is visible on camera). Furthermore, the ACORN employees involved reported his activities to the police after he left. O'Keefe selectively edited and manipulated his recordings of ACORN employees, as well as distorted the chronologies. Several journalists and media outlets have expressed regret for not properly scrutinizing and vetting his work.

Reception and lawsuit
After the videos were released through the fall of 2009, the U.S. Congress quickly voted to freeze federal funding to ACORN. The Census Bureau and the IRS terminated their contract relationships with ACORN. By December 2009, an external investigation of ACORN was published which cleared the organization of any illegality, while noting that its poor management practices contributed to unprofessional actions by some low-level employees. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would dissolve due to loss of funding from government and especially private sources.

On March 1, 2010, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes found there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in New York.

The California Attorney General's Office granted O'Keefe and Giles limited immunity from prosecution in exchange for providing the full, unedited videotapes related to ACORN offices in California. On the basis of the edited videotape which O'Keefe released, Vera appeared to be a willing participant in helping with O'Keefe's plan to smuggle young women into the United States illegally. However, authorities confirmed that Vera immediately contacted them about O'Keefe and that he had also encouraged O'Keefe to share as much information as possible about his scheme and gather further evidence of O'Keefe's purported illegal activities, which could then be used by prosecutors to bring charges against O'Keefe for attempted human trafficking. Due to O'Keefe's release of the dubiously edited video, intentionally designed to "prove" that ACORN employees were ready and willing to engage in illicit activities, Vera lost his job and was falsely accused of being engaged in human trafficking. O'Keefe said that he "regrets any pain" caused by his actions, though O'Keefe's lawyer dismissed any claimed injury incurred by Vera and stated that the payment was a "nuisance settlement".

O'Keefe moved for summary judgment in his favor, arguing that the plaintiff had no reasonable expectation that the conversation would be private. In August 2012, the federal judge hearing the case denied O'Keefe's motion for summary judgment. The judge ruled that O'Keefe had "misled plaintiff to believe that the conversation would remain confidential by posing as a client seeking services from ACORN and asking whether their conversation was confidential." On March 5, 2013, O'Keefe agreed to pay $100,000 to former California ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera for breaking state law prohibiting surreptitious recording, and acknowledged in the settlement that at the time he published his video he was unaware that Vera had notified the police about the incident. The settlement contained the following apology: "O'Keefe regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family."

On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report finding no evidence that ACORN, or any of its related organizations, had mishandled any of the $40 million in federal money which they had received in recent years.

Senator Mary Landrieu (2010)
O'Keefe and colleagues were arrested in the Hale Boggs Federal Complex in New Orleans in January 2010 and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, at the office of United States Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat. His three fellow activists, who were dressed as telephone repairmen when apprehended, included Robert Flanagan, the son of William Flanagan, acting U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Louisiana. The four men were charged with malicious intent to damage the phone system. O'Keefe stated that he had entered Landrieu's office to investigate complaints that she was ignoring phone calls from constituents during the debate over President Barack Obama's health care bill.

The charges in the case were reduced from a felony to a single misdemeanor count of entering a federal building under false pretenses. O'Keefe and the others pleaded guilty on May 26. O'Keefe was sentenced to three years' probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine. The three other men received lesser sentences. Another consequence is that O'Keefe is barred from soliciting donations from Florida residents, because of state law applicable to people found guilty of fraud.

In August 2013, O'Keefe revisited the incident by releasing a video entitled: "a confrontation with former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten on the campus of Tulane University". Letten is a former Republican U.S. Attorney who recused himself from the Landrieu incident because he knew the father of one of the men involved. The video shows Letten accusing O'Keefe of "terrorizing" Letten's wife at their home, of harassing him, and trespassing on the Tulane campus. He called O'Keefe a "coward" and a "spud", and referred to O'Keefe and his companions as "hobbits" and "scum".

NPR video (2011)
On March 8, 2011, shortly before the US Congress was to vote on funding for National Public Radio (NPR), O'Keefe released a heavily edited video of a discussion with Ronald Schiller, NPR's senior vice president for fundraising, and associate Betsy Liley. Raw content was secretly recorded by O'Keefe's partners Ken Larrey and Shaughn Adeleye.

NPR responded by stating that Schiller's remarks were presented out of sequence and that he said that he would speak personally, and not for NPR. Schiller said some highly placed Republicans believed the Republican Party had been hijacked by a radical group (the Tea Party) that they characterized as "Islamophobic" and "seriously racist, racist people", and while Schiller did not disagree, according to NPR, O'Keefe's editing made it appear those were Schiller's opinions. Schiller then says that unlike establishment Republicans, the growing Tea Party movement in the party "is fanatically involved in people's personal lives and very fundamental Christian — I wouldn't even call it Christian. It's this weird evangelical kind of move."

Later in the edited video, Schiller seems to say he believes NPR "would be better off in the long run without federal funding", explaining that removal of federal funding would allow NPR more independence and remove the widely held misconception that NPR is significantly funded by the public. But on the raw tape, Schiller also said that withdrawing federal funding would cause local stations to go under and that NPR is doing "everything we can" to keep it.

In a statement released before analysis of the longer raw video, NPR said, "Schiller's comments are in direct conflict with NPR's official position ... The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept." After reviewing the unedited video, Scott Baker, editor-in-chief of TheBlaze, said the NPR executives "seem to be fairly balanced people."

Journalists Ben Smith, James Poniewozik, and Dave Weigel have expressed regret for giving O'Keefe's NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves.

Reception
Comparison of the raw video with the released one revealed editing that was characterized as "selective" and "deceptive" by Michael Gerson, opinion writer for The Washington Post, who wrote, "O'Keefe did not merely leave a false impression; he manufactured an elaborate, alluring lie." Time magazine wrote that the video "transposed remarks from a different part of the meeting", was "manipulative" and "a partisan hit-job."

The raw video shows Schiller told the two men "that donors cannot expect to influence news coverage." On the longer tape, he says, "There is such a big firewall between funding and reporting: Reporters will not be swayed in any way, shape or form." Broadcast journalist Al Tompkins, who now teaches at the Poynter Institute, noted that Ron Schiller was a fundraiser, not an official affecting the newsroom. He commented on the raw tape: "The message that he said most often—I counted six times: He told these two people that he had never met before that you cannot buy coverage", Tompkins said. "He says it over and over and over again."

On March 17, Martha T. Moore of USA Today reported: "According to The Blaze analysis, Ron Schiller's most inflammatory remarks, that Tea Party members are 'seriously racist', were made as he was recounting the views of Republicans he has spoken with—although he does not appear to disagree. It also shows Schiller appearing to laugh about the potential spread of Islamic sharia law, when the longer version shows he laughed in reaction to something completely different."

Two days later, O'Keefe released a video in which Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving at NPR, appeared to have checked with senior management and said MEAC was cleared to make donations anonymously and NPR could help shield donations from government audits, but added that, in order to proceed, additional background information would be required, including an IRS Form 990. Liley advised the caller that NPR executives would investigate them before accepting any large donation, examining tax records and checking out other organizations that have received donations from them. Liley raises the possibility of NPR's turning down substantial gifts and stresses the "firewall" between the revenue-generating part of NPR and its news operation. NPR put Liley on administrative leave. In emails released following the publication of the Liley video, NPR confirmed that the official had consulted appropriately with top management and notified the purported donors of problems with their desired method of donation.

The video, which was released directly before a congressional vote on funding, caused immediate reaction from NPR critics in Congress. Ronald Schiller, who had already submitted his resignation in January so that he could join the Aspen Institute, moved up his resignation after the video release when NPR put him on administrative leave. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ronald Schiller), who had not been implicated in the Project Veritas video, quickly resigned. Vivian Schiller's resignation, mutually decided with the NPR board, was in part an attempt to show Congressional funders that NPR could hold itself accountable.

U.S. presidential elections (2016)
A month before the launch of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, the Trump Foundation donated $10,000 to O'Keefe's Project Veritas. O'Keefe attended, as a guest of the Trump campaign, the final presidential debate, and was later available in the spin room following the Las Vegas event.

Americans United for Change videos
On October 18, 2016, O'Keefe released a series of videos on Project Veritas' YouTube channel titled "Rigging the Election" that apparently showed former national field director Scott Foval of Americans United for Change discussing ensuring that they have people at the front of the rope lines at rallies in order to ask questions, a common practice known as "bird dogging". The accuracy of the videos has been questioned for possibly omitting context, and the unedited raw footage has not been made available.  The GOP-appointed Attorney General of Wisconsin, Brad Schimel, investigated the claims made in the video twice, both times finding no evidence that Foval broke any voting laws.

DNC Chair Donna Brazile said the video footage omitted necessary context. Scott Foval was fired by Americans United for Change after the first video was released. Foval later said he had been set up. Robert Creamer, a DNC consultant and husband of U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, said, "We regret the unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations that were captured on hidden cameras of a regional contractor for our firm, and he is no longer working with us," he said. "While none of the schemes described in the conversations ever took place, these conversations do not at all reflect the values of Democracy Partners." Shortly afterwards, Creamer, who was also featured in the video, said he would end his consulting arrangement with the DNC to avoid becoming a "distraction".

Following the publication of his videos, O'Keefe filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton and the DNC, alleging "a criminal conspiracy" involving the Clinton campaign, the DNC and three left-leaning super PACs. On June 1, 2017, Creamer's firm, Democracy Partners, filed a $1 million lawsuit against Project Veritas, claiming Project Veritas had lied to gain access to the firm and violating anti-wiretapping laws.

In response to a third video, in which O'Keefe stated that Clinton was behind an illegal public relations gimmick to punish Trump for not releasing his tax returns, the Clinton campaign denied any wrongdoing. Independent campaign finance experts posited the video doesn't support O'Keefe's claims. Clinton said she was aware of the activists dressed as Donald Duck, who were following Trump while asking about his tax returns, and said she was amused.

On October 26, 2016, O'Keefe posted a fourth video on his Project Veritas Action YouTube channel. The video alleged that liberal groups supporting Hillary Clinton were illegally taking foreign money. The targeted group, Americans United for Change foundation, is a 501(c)4 organization and is allowed to legally accept foreign contributions. However, AUC returned the money shortly after the video was released. The group's chief stated, "We returned the money because the last thing we want to be associated with is a character like O'Keefe who has been convicted and successfully sued for his illegal tactics and fraudulent activities."

On November 8, 2016 (Election Day), O'Keefe spent some time following vans that were allegedly "bussing people around to polls in Philadelphia".

On January 9, 2017, Project Veritas operative Allison Maass was filmed attempting to bribe members of Americans Take Action into inciting a riot at Trump's inauguration. On January 16, 2017, Project Veritas uploaded a video showing DC Antifascist Coalition members of Disrupt J20 plotting to use "stink bombs" at the DeploraBall. After the video's release, Disrupt J20 denied the statements, saying that the members deliberately gave false information to Veritas. The video led to the arrest of one man allegedly involved in the plan, as well as two associates. All three individuals pleaded guilty.

Other activities

Abbie Boudreau (2010)
In August 2010, O'Keefe planned a staged encounter with CNN correspondent Abbie Boudreau, who was working on a documentary on the young conservative movement. He set up an appointment at his office in Maryland to discuss a video shoot. Izzy Santa, executive director of Project Veritas, warned Boudreau that O'Keefe was planning to "punk" her on the boat by trying to seduce her—which he would film on hidden cameras. Boudreau did not board the boat and soon left the area.

CNN later published a 13-page plan written by O'Keefe mentor Ben Wetmore. It listed props for the boat scheme, including pornography, sexual aids, condoms, a blindfold and "fuzzy" handcuffs. When questioned by CNN, O'Keefe denied he was going to follow the Wetmore plan, as he found parts of it inappropriate. Boudreau commented "that does not appear to be true, according to a series of emails we obtained from Izzy Santa, who says the e-mails reveal James' true intentions."

Following the Boudreau incident, Project Veritas paid Izzy Santa a five-figure settlement after she threatened to sue, which included a non-disclosure agreement. Funding decreased from conservative political organizations following this CNN incident.

New Jersey Teachers' Union video (2010)
Starting October 25, 2010, O'Keefe posted a series of videos on the Internet entitled Teachers Unions Gone Wild. At the time, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) was in negotiations with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, over teacher pay benefits and tenure. O'Keefe obtained one video from recordings made by "citizen journalists", whom he recruited to attend the NJEA's leadership conference. They secretly recorded meetings and conversations with teacher participants. It featured teachers discussing the difficulty of firing a tenured teacher.

A second video featured a staged phone conversation by O'Keefe with Lawrence E. Everett, assistant superintendent of the Passaic, New Jersey city schools, in which Everett refused to commit to firing a teacher based upon the purported claim by a parent that the teacher had used the "n-word" with his child. The third video (October 26, 2010) featured audio of a voice, identified as NJEA Associate Director Wayne Dibofsky, who alleged voter fraud during the 1997 Jersey City mayoral election. The voice of Robert Byrne, Jersey City municipal clerk, was recorded on the same video; he noted that the election was monitored by lawyers for both candidates.

New Jersey's Republican Governor Chris Christie stated at the time that nothing on the videos surprised him. NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said the union and its attorneys were discussing their options regarding possible legal action, although no action was ever taken. Wollmer called the videos "a calculated attack on this organization and its members", and described O'Keefe as "flat-out sleazy".

Medicaid videos (2011)
In the summer of 2011, O'Keefe released videos of his colleagues' staged encounters purportedly showing Medicaid fraud in offices in six states, including Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Following his previous strategy, he sent the releases to conservative outlets over a period of weeks. In July 2011, two conservative groups released a secretly recorded video of an encounter in Maine's Department of Health and Human Services.

In the video, an actor attempted to apply for benefits while hinting that he was a drug smuggler. Americans for Prosperity and O'Keefe said he had similar recorded videos from offices in Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina, and believed that there was a systemic problem. In Maine, Governor Paul LePage concluded upon further examination of the videos that there was no fraud or intent to commit fraud.

A similar O'Keefe video posted on the Project Veritas web site purported to show workers at the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services assisting actors posing as drug dealers in applying for benefits. His fourth Medicaid video, apparently filmed in Richmond, Virginia, was released in July 2011. The New York Times reported: "[As 'Sean Murphy'], dressed in the same regalia he wore on the New Jersey shoot, [O'Keefe] presented himself to a Medicaid worker in Charleston, South Carolina, as an Irish drug importer and Irish Republican Army member who wanted coverage for 25 wounded comrades who entered the U.S. illegally. The kindly worker spent time photocopying applications and dealing with this improbable applicant." She explained to him that only U.S. citizens are eligible for Medicaid and informed him she was not making any promises that the 25 purported IRA members would qualify. She said he had to abide by the law and told him that she didn't want to know details, because federal law protects patient privacy: "Like I said, someone would have to come here and subpoena our information in order for us to divulge any information, because like I said there's something called the Health Insurance Accountability and Affordability Act—or portability—and anyway it went into effect several years ago, and that's what we follow. It is federal law, and they do threaten high fines—which they don't pay me as much per year as they threaten to fine me—so it is definitely not in my own best interest to divulge anything to anyone because I cannot afford it, I do not want to go to jail."

Reception
The videos received less media attention than earlier O'Keefe efforts. Generally, the state officials and representatives acknowledged potential problems but also took a measured tone in response, to allow time to fully investigate and evaluate the incidents. After viewing the video, Governor LePage thanked the individual who took the video and noted: "The video in its entirety does not show a person willfully helping someone de-fraud the welfare system. It does show a need for further job knowledge and continuous and improved staff training." He also stated that "we would be six months further along in fixing the problem" if he had received the video when it was filmed. LePage directed his agency director to work on correcting the problem.

Ohio media initially reported that "a Franklin County Jobs and Family Service worker was placed on administrative leave and at least one other person was out of work" as a result of the video's release. Ben Johnson of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services noted that benefits were never granted in the case, and that the made-up story would have been caught if the application process had proceeded. He said his office would use the video to strengthen staff training. Mike DeWine, Attorney General of Ohio, described the Ohio video as "outrageous" and intended to instruct his state's Medicaid fraud unit to look into the incident. The director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, Michael Colbert, notified county leaders of a mandatory retraining, "to ensure they can identify people trying to defraud the government". Upon investigation by state officials, the Medicaid worker who coached O'Keefe's operative seeking Medicaid for his father and claimed to own a yacht as well as a helipad, on how to hide their (also claimed) ownership of an $800,000 automobile had been placed on paid administrative leave. A spokesman for Virginia governor Bob McDonnell said that he had asked state police to review the video and take whatever actions are appropriate.

In Charleston, South Carolina, the director of that state's Department of Health and Human Services, Anthony Kreck, said the video filmed in his state "raises concerns about how well trained and supported our staff are to handle outrageous situations." He also expressed concern for the safety of the state employee with the figure ["Sean Murphy"] in the video "who could be interpreted as intimidating" and questioned why security wasn't called.

New Hampshire primary video (2012)
In January 2012, O'Keefe released a video of associates obtaining a number of ballots for the New Hampshire Primary by using the names of recently deceased voters. He stated that the video showed "the integrity of the elections process is severely comprised ." His team culled names from published obituaries, which were checked against public voter roll information. O'Keefe said his team broke no laws, as they did not pretend to be the deceased persons when they asked for the ballots, and they did not cast votes after receiving ballots. One of his associates' attempts was caught by a voting supervisor at the polling station who recognized that the name he gave was of a deceased individual; the associate in question left before police arrived.

Reception
Sarah Parnass of ABC News reported that the video "either exposes why voting laws are too lax or comes close to itself being voter fraud (or both)". One media account referred to it as a stunt. New Hampshire Governor John Lynch said, "I think it is outrageous that we have out-of-staters coming into New Hampshire, coming into our polling places and misrepresenting themselves to the election officials, and I hope that they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, if in fact they're found guilty of some criminal act." The New Hampshire Attorney General and the US Attorney's Office announced investigations into the video.

New Hampshire Associate Attorney General Richard Head said he would investigate the possible weaknesses in the voting system, but noted the state did not have a history of known fraud related to person[s] seeking ballot[s] in the name of a dead person or persons. Head announced he would investigate the possibility that the filmmakers committed crimes while producing the videos.

Hamline University law professor David Schultz said, "If they [O'Keefe's group] were intentionally going in and trying to fraudulently obtain a ballot, they violated the law", referring to Title 42, which prohibits procuring ballots fraudulently. The New Hampshire Attorney General's office later dropped its investigation of O'Keefe for potential voter fraud in 2013.

Patrick Moran (2012)
On October 24, 2012, a video was released showing Patrick Moran, son of then-U.S. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA), and a field director with his father's campaign, discussing a plan to cast fraudulent ballots, which was proposed to him by someone who posed as a fervent supporter of the campaign. The person he was speaking with was a conservative activist with O'Keefe's Project Veritas, and was secretly recording the conversation. Patrick Moran resigned from the campaign, saying he did not want to be a distraction during the election, stating:

[A]t no point have I, or will I ever endorse any sort of illegal or unethical behavior. At no point did I take this person seriously. He struck me as being unstable and joking, and for only that reason did I humor him. In hindsight, I should have immediately walked away, making it clear that there is no place in the electoral process for even the suggestion of illegal behavior, joking or not.

The Arlington County, Virginia Police Department was made aware of the video and opened a criminal investigation into "every component" of the matter.

On January 31, 2013, Arlington County announced that the investigation, by its police department in collaboration with the Offices of the Virginia Attorney General and the Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney, had concluded and that no charges would be brought. The County stated: "Patrick Moran and the Jim Moran for Congress campaign provided full cooperation throughout the investigation. Despite repeated attempts to involve the party responsible for producing the video, they failed to provide any assistance."

US–Mexico border-crossing (2014)
In August 2014, O'Keefe dressed up as Osama bin Laden (who had died 3 years previously) and crossed the US–Mexico border in Texas in both directions to "show that our elected officials were lying to the American people" about border security. The incident was cited by U.S. Senator John McCain in Congressional hearings.

Attempt to solicit voter fraud (2014)
In October 2014, O'Keefe and his two colleagues attempted to bait staffers for Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) and then-U.S. Senator Mark Udall, as well as independent expenditure organizations, into approving voter fraud, according to several staffers who interacted with O'Keefe and his colleagues. Staffers began photographing O'Keefe's crew and advising them that what they were advocating was illegal; one nonprofit said they contacted police.

Attempted sting of Open Society Foundations (2016)
On March 16, 2016, O'Keefe attempted to call Open Society Foundations under the assumed name of "Victor Kesh", describing himself as attached to "a, uh, foundation" seeking to "get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values." O'Keefe forgot to hang up after recording the voicemail, and several more minutes of audio were recorded, revealing that he was attached to Discover the Networks and planning a series of attempts to create embarrassing videos or other recordings of targeted groups.

CNN undercover videos (2017)
On June 26, 2017, O'Keefe released a video on the YouTube channel of Project Veritas that showed John Bonifield, a producer of health and medical stories for CNN, saying CNN's coverage of the Russia investigation was "Because it's ratings" and that the coverage was "mostly bullshit". The video identified Bonifield as a supervising producer for CNN but not specifically for CNN Health. CNN said it was standing by "our medical producer John Bonifield. Diversity of personal opinion is what makes CNN strong". During a White House press briefing, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the video "whether it's accurate or not, I don't know, but I would encourage everybody... across the country to take a look at it".

On June 28, 2017, O'Keefe released the second part of the series of undercover videos, by then dubbed "American Pravda". In the video, CNN anchor Van Jones said, "The Russia thing is just a big nothingburger." When asked about the video in an email, CNN responded "lol". During that same day, the videos were posted on Donald Trump's Instagram account. Jones said that O'Keefe had deceptively edited the video to take his remarks out of context and was attempting to "pull off a hoax." Jones added that he believed that there probably was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

On June 30, 2017, O'Keefe released the third part of the undercover videos. Part 3 of the series showed CNN associate producer Jimmy Carr saying that Trump is "fucking crazy" and that "on the inside, we all recognize he is a clown, that he is hilariously unqualified for this, he's really bad at this, and that he does not have America's best interests". Carr also said "This is a man who's not actually a Republican, he just adopted that because that was the party he thought he could win in. He doesn't believe anything that these people believe." Additionally, he said American voters are "stupid as shit." He also made comments about Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, calling her an "awful woman" and stating that she "looks like she got hit with a shovel". In a fourth video published by Project Veritas on July 5, Carr criticized CNN co-anchor Chris Cuomo.

Failed attempt to sting The Washington Post (2017) 
Starting in July 2017, Project Veritas operative Jaime Phillips attempted to infiltrate The Washington Post and other media outlets by joining networking groups related to journalism and left-leaning politics. She and a male companion attended events related to the Post, and their conversations with journalists were sometimes covertly recorded.

In November 2017, The Washington Post reported that several women accused Republican Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of pursuing them while they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. Later that same month, Jaime Phillips approached The Washington Post and falsely claimed that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and that she had an abortion. In conducting its usual fact-checking, the Post discovered multiple red flags in her story. They found a GoFundMe page in her name that said, "I've accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt  of the liberal MSM." After a Post reporter confronted her with the inconsistencies during a video-recorded interview, Phillips denied that she was working with an organization that targets journalists, and said that she no longer wanted to do the story. She was seen outside Project Veritas' office in Mamaroneck, New York, with her car remaining at the office's parking lot for more than an hour. O'Keefe declined to comment about the woman's apparent connection to Project Veritas. Instead of running a story about Phillips' supposed pregnancy, the Post published an article about the attempted sting operation. The Post decided to disclose Phillips' original discussions made off the record, saying they were not obligated to keep them confidential because she had deceived them.

Hours after the Post published this story, O'Keefe released a video which he claimed exposed the newspaper's liberal bias. The video includes undercover footage of conversations with two Post employees, national security reporter Dan Lamothe and product director Joey Marburger. These employees explained to undercover Project Veritas operatives the difference between the news reporting of The Washington Post (which calls out the Trump administration's missteps while giving "him credit where there's credit" due) and the Post's opinion editorials; O'Keefe said that this exposed the Washington Post's "hidden agenda."

O'Keefe was criticized for his failed sting, and The Washington Post was praised. Rod Dreher of The American Conservative praised the Post and called on conservative donors to stop giving money to O'Keefe's outfit. Dan McLaughlin of the conservative National Review said that O'Keefe's sting was an "own goal" and that O'Keefe was doing a disservice to the conservative movement; Jim Geraghty of the National Review made a similar assessment. Byron York of The Washington Examiner said that O'Keefe's "idiocy" was "beyond boneheaded," and that "O'Keefe really ought to hang it up." Ben Shapiro, the conservative editor in chief of The Daily Wire, said that the botched sting was "horrible, both morally and effectively." Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic wrote, "If James O'Keefe respected the right-wing populists who make up the audience of Project Veritas ... he would tell them the truth about all of the organizations that he targets. Instead, Project Veritas operates in bad faith, an attribute it demonstrated again this week in the aftermath of its bungled attempt to trick The Washington Post." Noah Rothman of the conservative magazine Commentary chastised O'Keefe for being exploitative of his audience: "No longer are institutions like Veritas dedicated to combating ignorance in their audience. They're actively courting it."

Jonathan Chait of New York magazine said that O'Keefe, having set out prove that the Post was fake news, ended up disproving it. O'Keefe's plot collapsed because it was premised on a ludicrously false worldview, wrote Chait. "The Washington Post does not, in fact, publish unverified accusations just because they're against Republicans." O'Keefe's attempts to prove rampant voter fraud have failed "because voter fraud is not rampant."

New Jersey Education Association videos (2018) 

On May 2, 2018, Project Veritas posted on YouTube a video allegedly showing a union administrator from the New Jersey Education Association, a teachers union, discussing a teacher alleged to have struck a student. The following day, O'Keefe released a second video allegedly showing another union administrator speaking to students about a different alleged incident of a teacher pushing and injuring a student. In the video, the administrator allegedly boasted of her effort to retain a pension for a teacher who allegedly had sex with a student. Both teachers were suspended pending an investigation, and resigned from their union roles after the release of the videos. During a New Jersey Senate meeting on May 31, the New Jersey Education Association announced that a law firm would investigate the incidents.

Twitter suspension (2021) 
On April 15, 2021, O'Keefe was suspended from Twitter for "operating fake accounts". On April 19, he filed a lawsuit against Twitter in state court in Westchester County, New York, claiming that Twitter’s reason for suspending him is "false and defamatory".

FBI search warrants and allegedly stolen Biden diary (2021)

On November 6, 2021, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executed an early morning court-ordered search of O'Keefe's apartment in Mamaroneck, New York two days after searching the homes of two of O'Keefe's associates in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2020. Excerpts allegedly from the diary were posted two weeks before the 2020 US presidential election.

Reception
Project Veritas uses methods not employed by reputable journalists, including misrepresenting its operatives' identities. O'Keefe refers to himself as a "guerrilla journalist". Such methods have stirred debate about what it means to be a journalist and what constitutes good journalistic practice, especially with respect to undercover work.

Tim Kenneally and Daniel Frankel reporting for TheWrap in 2011 noted that some of O'Keefe's supporters referred to him as the right wing's answer to a long line of left-leaning "hybrid troublemakers who get put on the cover of Rolling Stone, like Paul Krassner and Abbie Hoffman". In that same 2011 report, Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, was quoted as saying:

What [O'Keefe] does isn't journalism. It's agitpop, politi-punking, entrapment-entertainment. There is no responsible definition of journalism that includes what he does or how he does it. His success at luring his prey into harming themselves is a measure of how fallible and foolish anyone, including good people, can sometimes be.

In reporting on allegations that O'Keefe had attempted in 2010 to tamper with Senator Landrieu's office phone system, Jim Rutenberg and Campbell Robertson of the New York Times posited that O'Keefe practiced a kind of "gonzo journalism" and his tactic is to "caricature the political and social values of his enemies by carrying them to outlandish extremes."
 
In a March 2011 interview with O'Keefe, NPR journalist Bob Garfield asked, referring to the ACORN videos, "If your journalistic technique is the lie, why should we believe anything you have to say?" O'Keefe responded that his techniques should be characterized as a form of guerrilla theater  rather than "lying" – "you're posing as something you're not, in order to capture candid conversations from your subject. But I wouldn't characterize it as, as lying."

In July 2011, Dean Mills, the dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, compared O'Keefe to Michael Moore and said, "Some ethicists say it is never right for a journalist to deceive for any reason, but there are wrongs in the world that will never be exposed without some kind of subterfuge." The Atlantic journalist Conor Friedersdorf responded that O'Keefe's "mortal sin" wasn't that he misled his subjects, but that he misled his audience by presenting his videos to the public in "less than honest ways that go far beyond normal 'selectivity.'"

On February 11, 2021, the Twitter account for Project Veritas was “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.” At the same time, O'Keefe's account was “temporarily locked” for violating the policy pending the deletion of a tweet. On April 15, Twitter permanently suspended O'Keefe's personal account for violating the Twitter's policy against "platform manipulation and spam", which disallows the use of fake accounts to "artificially amplify or disrupt conversations". O'Keefe denied that he used fake Twitter accounts and said that he would sue Twitter in response.

On November 6, 2021, the FBI executed an early morning court-ordered search of O'Keefe's apartment in Mamaroneck, New York two days after searching the homes of two of O'Keefe's associates in connection with the theft of a diary belonging to President Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, in 2020. Excerpts allegedly from the diary were posted two weeks before the 2020 US presidential election.

Works

References

External links
 Project Veritas website
 Interview of O'Keefe by NPR's On the Media (audio with transcript)

1984 births
Living people
American activist journalists
American alternative journalists
American anti–illegal immigration activists
American conspiracy theorists
American critics of Islam
American filmmakers
American people of Irish descent
People from Westwood, New Jersey
Rutgers University alumni
American anti-abortion activists
The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is an international collection of autonomous community-based organizations that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working. The association was founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado, and, at its peak in the US, had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities.

In the US, ACORN suffered a damaging nationwide controversy in the fall of 2009 after James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles secretly recorded, selectively edited and released videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several of their offices, portraying the personnel as encouraging criminal behavior. Multiple investigations on the federal, state, and county level found that the released tapes were selectively edited to portray ACORN as negatively as possible, that nothing in the videos warranted criminal charges against ACORN or its employees, and that the clandestine recordings violated privacy laws in Maryland and California. The organization conducted its own audits and cooperated with investigations of employees, referring some cases to law enforcement. In the meantime, however, the organization suffered an immediate loss of funding from government agencies with which it had contracts and from private donors.

The loss of funds had been too damaging, and by March 2010, 15 of ACORN's 30 state chapters had already closed.  ACORN announced it was closing its remaining state chapters and disbanding.  On November 2, 2010, its U.S. offices filed for Chapter 7 liquidation effectively closing the organization. ACORN members and organizers formed new organizations in at least three states while ACORN groups outside of the US continued unaffected. ACORN, under ACORN International, still works within the US through its Home Savers Campaign, for example.<ref>Akers, Seymour, Butler, Rathke, 'Liquid tenancy: 'Post-crisis' economies of displacement, community organizing, and new forms of resistance' in Radical Housing Journal, April 2019 Vol 1(1): 9–28</ref>

 Organization and budget 
In the US, ACORN was composed of a number of legally distinct nonprofit entities and affiliates including a nationwide umbrella organization established as a 501(c)(4) that performed lobbying; local chapters established as 501(c)(3) nonpartisan charities; and the national nonprofit and nonstock organization, ACORN Housing Corporation. ACORN's priorities included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, labor-oriented causes and social justice issues. ACORN pursued these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation.

Until the controversies of 2008 and 2009, in the US ACORN had an annual budget of approximately US$25 million, with approximately 10% of those funds coming from federal sources, a smaller figure from state sources, and the rest coming from supporters and membership.  HUD estimated that ACORN received $42 million in federal funds since the 2000 budget year; the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee estimated that ACORN received $53 million since 1994.

 History 

1970–1975
Wade Rathke founded ACORN in 1970, after the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) sent him to Little Rock, Arkansas, as an organizer. Rathke had previously dropped out of Williams College to promote draft resistance for Students for a Democratic Society. Gary Delgado and George Wiley were also instrumental in its founding. ACORN's first campaign was to help welfare recipients attain their basic needs, such as clothing and furniture. This drive, inspired by a clause in the Arkansas welfare laws, began their effort to create and sustain a movement to assist welfare and lower-income working individuals; they developed the Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now, the beginnings of ACORN.

ACORN's goal was to "unite welfare recipients with needy working people around issues such as school lunches, unemployment, Vietnam veterans' rights, and emergency room care."

1975–1980
In 1975, ACORN created branches in Texas and South Dakota. On December 13, 1975, sixty leaders from the three ACORN states elected the first associate Executive Board and the first ACORN president, Steve McDonald, to deal with matters beyond the scope of the individual city and state boards. Each year thereafter ACORN chapters were established in three or more states, building to a total of 20 states represented by 1980. This expansion led to multi-state campaigns, beginning with a mass meeting of 1,000 members in Memphis in 1978. At the end of the conference, ACORN convention delegates marched on the Democratic Party conference with the outline of a nine-point "People's Platform." When ratified in 1979, this became the foundation of ACORN's platform.

ACORN was active in the 1980 Election with the "People's Platform" serving as its standard. It led demonstrations aimed at both major party candidates; demanded to meet with President Jimmy Carter; marched on the president's campaign finance committee chair's home; and presented its platform to the Republican Party platform committee.

1981–1989
By 1980, ACORN's staff was stretched thin by the demands of meeting its expansion goals. Much of its resources and energy had been dedicated to the presidential primaries and national party conventions. ACORN launched squatting campaigns in an attempt to obtain affordable housing, and encouraged squatters to refit the premises for comfortable living.

In June 1982, ACORN sponsored "Reagan Ranches" in Washington, DC and more than 35 other cities, in reaction to its belief that the president was focused on military as opposed to social spending. These tent cities were erected for two days on national park grounds; they were resisted by the National Park Service, which tried repeatedly to evict the tenters. The protesters remained; they marched on the White House and members testified before a Congressional committee about what they described as the housing crisis in America. The last Reagan Ranch was held at the Republican Convention in Dallas in 1984. 

In addition to protesting, ACORN also developed and strengthened its political action committees and encouraged its members to run for office. For the 1984 election ACORN wanted to endorse a candidate, setting a 75% support in polls among members as its requirement. No candidate reached that level, though there was strong support for Jesse Jackson. ACORN also established a legislative office that year in Washington, DC. During this period ACORN also focused on local election reform in a number of cities, including Pittsburgh, Columbia, South Carolina, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. They encouraged cities to change legislative bodies whose members were elected at-large to electing members by single-member district, which resulted in more participation by minorities, including women. At-large voting tends to favor candidates who can appeal to the majority and who can command more campaign funding, reducing participation by a wider variety of citizens.

By the end of Reagan's first term, ACORN operated in 27 states, adding chapters in New York City, Washington, DC, and Chicago. During the 1988 Election, ACORN held its National Convention in the same city as the Democratic Convention — Atlanta.

ACORN's membership grew to more than 70,000 in 28 states during this time. It increased its legislative lobbying efforts in Washington, DC, and strengthened its Political Action Committees (PACs). It also developed what it called the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement (AM/FM). Starting with station KNON in Dallas, AM/FM established radio stations, UHF television and cable television programming. It also sought and received appointments to the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), which was formed to dissolve the assets of failed Savings and Loans resulting from the Savings and Loan crisis.

1988–1998

While some of ACORN's most notable efforts were in the area of housing, it has counted health, public safety, education, representation, work and workers' rights and communications concerns among its victories.  The 1990 ACORN convention in Chicago focused on the fast-breaking housing campaign.  It featured a squatting demonstration at an RTC house.  ACORN members demanded that banks provide loan data on low- and moderate-income communities and comply with the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).  ACORN fought weakening of the CRA in 1991, staging a two-day takeover of the House Banking Committee hearing room.  It established ACORN Housing Corporation to assist people in moving into homes under the housing campaign, and to rehabilitate hundreds of houses addressed by the CRA.  The ACORN convention in New York in 1992, called the "ACORN-Bank Summit", was organized to make deals with giant banks.  When Citibank, the nation's largest bank, did not participate, conventioneers protested at its downtown Manhattan headquarters, and won a meeting to negotiate for similar programs.  

ACORN supported and lobbied for the "Motor Voter" Act, which provided for voter registration at motor vehicle bureaus.  After its passage, ACORN members attended President Clinton's signing ceremony.  ACORN worked for new voter registration laws in Arkansas and Massachusetts and filed suit in Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania against certain state practices as a result of the act.

In 1993, ACORN also began a national campaign to fight insurance redlining, a practice that put the gains made in other housing campaigns at risk.  The campaign targeted Allstate, hitting sales offices in 14 cities and a stockholders meeting.   Allstate agreed to negotiate and signed an agreement in 1994 for a $10 million partnership with ACORN and NationsBank for below-market mortgages to low-income home-buyers.  Travelers Insurance agreed to a Neighborhood and Home Safety Program, linking access to insurance and lower rates to public safety programs.  

1998–2004
ACORN has worked on supporting a "Living Wage" programs, voter registration, and grassroots political organization.

In 1998, ACORN helped form the Working Families Party in New York, which had made increasing the minimum wage as its centerpiece issue.

A March 27, 2003 decision of the National Labor Relations Board found that ACORN tried to thwart union organizing efforts within its own organization by laying off two workers who were trying to organize. The two workers, both field organizers with ACORN, began discussions with the Service Employees International Union and later sought to organize under Industrial Workers of the World, seeking to improve their $20,200 annual salary for a 54-hour work week. The NLRB ordered the two employees be reinstated in their former jobs and that ACORN cease from interrogating employees about organizing activity.

In 2004, Florida ACORN helped to raise Florida's minimum wage by $1.00 per hour, by lobbying for a minimum wage amendment to be placed on the ballot. Over 1 million Florida employees were affected by the raise, which is adjusted annually for inflation. That year, ACORN became an international organization, opening offices in Canada, Peru, and beginning work in Dominican Republic. Offices have subsequently been opened in Mexico and Argentina.

ACORN International was created in 2004 as an offshoot of ACORN to aid the spread of ACORN's model to other countries.

2008–2009
Controversies
According to academics and community organisers Dave Beck and Rob Purcell, '[o]nce ACORN began to seriously threaten powerful vested interests, from the finance sector to the Republican Party, then a sustained attempt to shut down or seriously damage the organisation was likely to happen'.

Accusations of voter fraud
ACORN is a liberal organization, and in the US its legally separate political action arm frequently endorsed causes and candidates, including the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. ACORN lobbied every Democratic National Convention since 1980 and had members elected as delegates to those conventions; ACORN also lobbied at Republican conventions. ACORN was criticized by Republicans for its support of Democratic candidates and for its general support of political positions that are more often favored by Democrats.

In a report released in October 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General concluded that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (one of nine US attorneys removed in 2006) for political reasons after Iglesias failed to prosecute a New Mexico ACORN chapter. The report said claims that Iglesias was fired for poor performance were not credible, and the "real reason for Iglesias's removal was the complaints from New Mexico Republican politicians and party activists about how Iglesias handled voter fraud [cases]." Iglesias did not believe there was sufficient evidence to support prosecution by the government.

During the debate on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, some commentators claimed that a draft provision (omitted in the adopted bill) to give money to funds run by the U.S. Department of the Treasury could potentially lead to money going to groups like ACORN. When asked how much money ACORN or other community groups would get, a spokesman for Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, said, "Absolutely none. All funds would go to state and local governments." Critics also claimed that ACORN's complex organizational structure allowed it to escape public scrutiny.

ACORN was among groups conducting voter registration drives prior to the 2008 presidential election; it was alleged they were responsible for voter registration fraud and had a conflict of interest. During the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary, ACORN's national political action committee, ACORN Votes, endorsed Barack Obama. Obama, with several other attorneys, had served as local counsel for ACORN more than a decade earlier in a 1995 voting rights lawsuit joined by the Justice Department and the League of Women Voters. Obama's campaign hired an ACORN affiliate for $800,000 to conduct a get-out-the-vote effort during that primary, but did not retain ACORN for the general presidential election.

Throughout the election season, supporters of Republican candidates alleged that ACORN was responsible for widespread vote fraud. In October 2008, the campaign for Republican presidential candidate John McCain released a Web-based advertisement claiming ACORN was responsible for "massive voter fraud," a point that Sen. McCain repeated in the final presidential debate. FactCheck.org called this claim "breathtakingly inaccurate," but acknowledged that ACORN had problems with phony registrations. The ads also claimed that home loan programs ACORN promoted were partly responsible for the sub-prime mortgage crisis, claims which Newsweek and Factcheck.org also found to be exaggerated and inaccurate.

A poll released in November 2009 by Public Policy Polling found that 26% of respondents overall, believed in a conspiracy theory that ACORN "stole" the election for Barack Obama. That number increased to 56% amongst Republicans polled.  The Democratic polling organization commented that this was somewhat higher than belief in the birther conspiracy theories. (In a follow-poll in 2012, PPP found that 49% of Republicans, nearly the same percentage as in 2009, believed that ACORN had stolen the 2012 election for Obama, despite the fact that by then ACORN was no longer operating.)

EmbezzlementThe New York Times reported on July 9, 2008, that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN's founder Wade Rathke, was found to have embezzled $948,607.50 from the group and affiliated charitable organizations in 1999 and 2000. ACORN executives decided to handle it as an internal matter, and did not inform most of the board members or law enforcement, and instead signed an enforceable restitution agreement with the Rathke family to repay the amount of the embezzlement. $210,000 has already been repaid, and a donor, Drummond Pike, has offered to pay the remaining debt. The Times reported that, according to Wade Rathke, "the decision to keep the matter secret was not made to protect his brother but because word of the embezzlement would have put a 'weapon' into the hands of enemies of ACORN, a liberal group that is a frequent target of conservatives who object to ACORN's often strident advocacy on behalf of low- and moderate-income families and workers." A whistleblower revealed the embezzlement in 2008. On June 2, 2008, Dale Rathke was dismissed, and Wade stepped down as ACORN's chief organizer, but he remains chief organizer for Acorn International L.L.C.

In September 2008, following revelations of Dale Rathke's embezzlement, two members of ACORN's national board of directors filed a lawsuit seeking to obtain financial documents and to force the organization to sever ties with Wade Rathke. ACORN's executive committee voted unanimously to remove the two, "because their actions—such as releasing a confidential legal memo to the press—were damaging the organization."

In October 2009, Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell claimed in a subpoena that ACORN's board of directors found that a larger amount—$5 million—had been embezzled from the organization. Bertha Lewis, ACORN's CEO, said the allegation is false. On November 6, following up on the subpoena, Caldwell served a search warrant at the ACORN headquarters in New Orleans. Caldwell stated, "This is an investigation of everything—Acorn, the national organization, the local organization and all of its affiliated entities."

Undercover videos controversy

In September 2009, Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe publicized selectively editedFake pimp from ACORN videos tries to 'punk' CNN correspondent CNN; September 29, 2009 hidden camera recordings through Fox News and Andrew Breitbart's website BigGovernment.com.  In the videos, Giles posed as a prostitute and O'Keefe posed as her boyfriend in order to elicit damaging responses from employees of ACORN. The videos were recorded over the summer of 2009 while visiting ACORN offices in eight cities, and purported to show low-level ACORN employees in several cities providing advice to Giles and O'Keefe on how to avoid taxes and detection by the authorities with regard to their plans to engage in tax evasion, human smuggling, and child prostitution.

After the videos were made public, the U.S. Congress voted to eliminate federal funding to ACORN. The House passed a bill by a 345–75 vote to stop all federal funding to ACORN. Every House Republican who attended the vote backed the measure, as well as 172 Democrats, while only 75 Democrats opposed it. The Senate, earlier had passed a bill by an 83 to 7 margin to bar ACORN from receiving federal housing grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Although the resolutions were later nullified in a federal court ruling that the measure was an unconstitutional bill of attainder, on August 13, 2010, a federal appeals court upheld the congressional act that cut off federal funding for ACORN.Hays, Tom. Federal appeals court in NY rules against ACORN. Associated Press, August 13, 2010. In March 2010, ACORN announced it would be closing its offices and disbanding due to loss of funding from government and private donors.

On December 7, 2009, the former Massachusetts Attorney General, after an independent internal investigation of ACORN, found the videos that had been released appeared to have been edited, "in some cases substantially". He found no evidence of criminal conduct by ACORN employees, but concluded that ACORN had poor management practices that contributed to unprofessional actions by a number of its low-level employees.ACORN Investigation Results  , The Nonprofit Quarterly On March 1, 2010, the District Attorney's office for Brooklyn determined that the videos were "heavily edited" and "many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister", and concluded that there was no criminal wrongdoing by the ACORN staff in the videos from the Brooklyn ACORN office.  On April 1, 2010, an investigation by the California Attorney General found the videos from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino to be "heavily edited," and the investigation did not find evidence of criminal conduct on the part of ACORN employees. On June 14, 2010, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its findings which showed that ACORN evidenced no sign that it, or any of its related organizations, mishandled any federal money they had received.

Defund ACORN Act
In late 2009, after various allegations of criminal activity due to the videos, a number of Democrats who once advertised their connections to ACORN began to distance themselves.  In immediate response to the 2009 video controversy, the United States House and Senate, by wide margins, attached amendments to pending spending legislation that would temporarily prohibit the federal government from funding ACORN, or any agency that had been involved in similar scandals — including money authorized by previous legislation.  President Obama signed the bill into law on October 1.

ACORN sued the United States Government in the United States District Court in Brooklyn over the measure, known as the "Defund ACORN Act", claiming it was a bill of attainder, and therefore unconstitutional. Experts varied on the merit of the case, which was styled ACORN v. United States. One argument was that while government funding choices do not generally qualify as bills of attainder, the lack of a non-punitive regulatory purpose for the legislation may give a court "sufficient basis to overcome the presumption of constitutionality." The court issued a preliminary injunction that nullified the act.

In response to an inquiry from a Housing and Urban Development Department lawyer, David Barron, the acting assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote a five-page memorandum concluding that the law does not prohibit the government from paying ACORN for services already performed. On December 11, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued a preliminary injunction blocking the government from enforcing its temporary spending ban, a week before it was set to expire. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) opened an investigation of ACORN in December 2009. In June 2010, the GAO released a preliminary report stating the investigation has found no sign the group or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received from nine federal agencies.

On August 13, 2010 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed Judge Gershon's decision. The appeals court cited a study finding that only 10% of ACORN's funding came from federal sources, and stated, "We doubt that the direct consequences of the appropriations laws temporarily precluding ACORN from federal funds were so disproportionately severe or so inappropriate as to constitute punishment." The Center for Constitutional Rights, which had argued the case on ACORN's behalf, was considering a request for a rehearing by more judges of the 2nd Circuit.

Dissolution
On March 19, 2010, The New York Times reported that ACORN was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy; 15 of the group's 30 state chapters had disbanded over the previous six months, and other chapters (including the largest, in New York and California) renamed themselves and severed all ties to the national organization.  Two unnamed ACORN officials told the Times'' that the following weekend, a teleconference was planned to discuss a bankruptcy filing; "private donations from foundations to Acorn [had] all but evaporated," and the federal government had distanced itself from the group. "[L]ong before the activist videos delivered what may become the final blow, the organization was dogged for years by financial problems and accusations of fraud." "That 20-minute video ruined 40 years of good work," said Sonja Merchant-Jones, former co-chairwoman of ACORN's recently closed Maryland chapter. "But if the organization had confronted its own internal problems, it might not have been taken down so easily."

On March 22, 2010, National ACORN spokesman Kevin Whelan says the organization's board decided to close remaining state affiliates and field offices by April 1 because of falling revenues. Other national operations continued operating for another several weeks before shutting for good. On April 20, ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis reported that ACORN was "still alive. We're limping along. We're on life support." Lewis said that ACORN's annual budget had been reduced from $25 million to $4 million, and that its staff of 350 to 600 people had been reduced to four. Lewis explained the controversies had left a stain on ACORN, "sort of like a scarlet letter," forcing the group to spend money defending itself against "one investigation after another."

ACORN-affiliated groups
After the dissolution of ACORN in the US, some chapters continued operations by setting up new organization:
Members and staff of California ACORN founded a new organization, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. 
New York ACORN founded New York Communities for Change. 
A Milwaukee offshoot of ACORN called Acorn Housing changed its name to Affordable Housing Centers of America yet has retained the same tax and employee identification numbers that it held under its former name.
The Center for Popular Democracy includes many of the old chapters of ACORN.

After ACORN International was founded, groups in other countries became affiliated, include Living Rent in Scotland and Alliance Citoyenne in France.

References

Bibliography

External links

ACORN International's US campaigns
ACORN International website
Legacy websites
ACORN USA website placeholder
The ACORN website as it appeared in 2009 (USA)

Organizations established in 1970
1970 establishments in the United States
Organizations disestablished in 2010
Civil rights organizations in the United States
Community-building organizations
Consumer rights organizations
United States political action committees
Affordable housing advocacy organizations
Gun control advocacy groups in the United States
Immigration political advocacy groups in the United States
Nonpartisan organizations in the United States
Progressive organizations in the United States
Squatting in the United States The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is an international collection of autonomous community-based organizations that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing, and other social issues. They, along with a number of other community unions, are affiliated under ACORN International.

Organization 
In the US, ACORN was composed of a number of legally distinct nonprofit entities and affiliates including a nationwide umbrella organization established as a 501(c)(4) that performed lobbying; local chapters established as 501(c)(3) nonpartisan charities; and the national nonprofit and nonstock organization, ACORN Housing Corporation. ACORN's priorities included: better housing and wages for the poor, more community development investment from banks and governments, better public schools, labor-oriented causes and social justice issues. ACORN pursued these goals through demonstration, negotiation, lobbying for legislation, and voter participation.

Unlike in the US, ACORN groups in other countries have little organizational funding. Under the ACORN model, most members are volunteers. Employed union organizers come from those working in local ACORN campaigns rather than from existing organizations and are paid a low wage. The union works on local and national level campaigns.

History

Founded in 1970 by Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado, at its peak ACORN had over 500,000 members and more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the U.S. as well as groups in other countries. In 2004, ACORN International was created to aid the spread of ACORN's model to other countries. For example, there has been or currently is an ACORN presence in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Peru and the UK, with affiliate groups in Scotland and France.

In the US, ACORN suffered a damaging nationwide controversy in the fall of 2009 after James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles secretly made, edited and released videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several of their offices, leading to several investigations by state officials that concluded the videos were inaccurately portraying the personnel as encouraging criminal behavior. The organization didn't recover in the US and dissolved, with ACORN members and organizers forming new organizations. ACORN groups outside of the US continued unaffected. ACORN, under ACORN International, still works within the US through its Home Savers Campaign, for example.

Issues and actions

Predatory lending and affordable housing
ACORN investigated complaints against companies accused of predatory lending practices. ACORN also worked to support strict state laws against predatory practices, organized against foreclosure rescue scams, and steered borrowers toward loan counseling; Following a three-year campaign, Household International (now owned by HSBC Holdings and renamed HSBC Finance Corporation), one of the largest subprime lenders in the country, and ACORN announced on November 25, 2003 a proposed settlement of a 2002 national class-action lawsuit brought by ACORN. The settlement created a $72 million foreclosure avoidance program to provide relief to household borrowers who were at risk of losing their homes. The settlement came on the heels of an earlier $484 million settlement between Household, Attorneys General, and bank regulators from all 50 U.S. states.

Education
ACORN opposed the privatization of some NYC schools, favoring its own Charter School plan.

Voter registration
Since the 1980s, ACORN conducted large-scale voter registration drives, focusing primarily on registering poor and minority citizens.

In addition to conducting voter registration drives, ACORN worked to remove obstacles to voter registration. In 2006, it brought a lawsuit in federal court in Ohio against the Ohio Secretary of State, at that time Ken Blackwell, and the Director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, alleging that, during the period that included the 2004 United States election voting controversies, the defendants had committed multiple violations of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The district court dismissed the case, but that decision was reversed in 2008 by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. The parties agreed to a settlement, under which the defendants agreed to implement several measures to facilitate registration of low-income voters to bring the state into compliance with the National Voting Rights Act.

Gun control
In 2006, ACORN intervened on behalf of Jersey City, New Jersey, in a lawsuit brought against the city challenging a local ordinance that limited individuals' handgun purchases to one gun a month. The Hudson County Superior Court struck down the ordinance on the grounds that it violated the New Jersey Constitution's Equal Protection clause, and a state statute prohibiting towns and municipalities from enacting firearms legislation. On September 29, 2008, the New Jersey Superior Court Appellate Division denied ACORN's appeal of the Hudson County Superior Court's decision striking down Jersey City's ordinance.

Home Defender Program
In 2009, ACORN advocated allowing homeowners delinquent in their mortgage payments to remain in their homes pending a government solution to the housing foreclosure crisis. ACORN introduced a program called the Home Defender Program, intended to mobilize people to congregate at homes faced with foreclosure to "defend a family's right to stay in their homes."

Legal issues 
During the 2008 election season, ACORN gathered over 1.3 million voter registration forms in 21 states. Project Vote estimated that 400,000 registrations collected by ACORN were ultimately rejected, the vast majority for being duplicate registrations submitted by citizens. Project Vote estimated that only a few percent of registrations were fraudulent, based on past years and samples from some drives in 2008. Project Vote estimated that 450,000 of the registrations collected by ACORN represented first-time voters, while the remainder were address changes submitted by citizens updating their addresses.

ACORN has fired employees for fraudulent registration practices and turned them over to authorities. Of 26,513 registrations submitted by ACORN over a nine-month period in San Diego County, California, 4,655 were initially flagged, but 2,806 of those were later validated. County officials said this resulted in a 7% error rate by ACORN, compared to usually less than 5% for voter drives by other organizations.

In a 2007 case in Washington state, in which seven temporary employees of ACORN were charged with submitting fraudulent voter registrations, ACORN agreed to pay King County $25,000 for its investigative costs and acknowledged that the national organization could be subject to criminal prosecution if fraud occurred. In May 2009, six ACORN employees in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to charges of a combined total of 51 counts of forgery and other violations while registering voters during the 2008 election cycle.

In plea deals in a 2009 Las Vegas case, former ACORN field director Amy Busefink and ACORN official Christopher Edwards pleaded guilty to "conspiracy to commit the crime of compensation for registration of voters," in connection with a quota system for paid registration staff. Edwards was sentenced to a year's probation and agreed to testify for prosecutors in charges against ACORN and against Busefink. Busefink appealed her case to the Nevada Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute. In April 2011, ACORN entered a guilty plea to one count of felony compensation for registration of voters, for which they were fined $5000, but did not concede that the law was constitutional.

ACORN International

ACORN International was created in 2004 as an offshoot of ACORN to aid the spread of ACORN's model to other countries, including Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Peru. The first ACORN branch in the UK opened in Bristol in 2014 by three people, two of whom were graduates of the Community Organisers programme.

Other groups are affiliated with ACORN: for example, Living Rent in Scotland and Alliance Citoyenne in France.

References

Bibliography

External links

ACORN International - with information about ACORN branches in various countries

Organizations established in 1970
1970 establishments in the United States
Organizations disestablished in 2010
Civil rights organizations in the United States
Community-building organizations
Consumer rights organizations
United States political action committees
Affordable housing advocacy organizations
Gun control advocacy groups in the United States
Immigration political advocacy groups in the United States
Nonpartisan organizations in the United States
Progressive organizations in the United States
Squatting in the United States