{"id":12192,"date":"2014-04-08T10:26:12","date_gmt":"2014-04-08T17:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=12192"},"modified":"2014-04-08T10:26:12","modified_gmt":"2014-04-08T17:26:12","slug":"its-official-james-okeefes-videos-are-legally-political-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=12192","title":{"rendered":"It’s Official: James O’Keefe’s Videos Are Legally ‘Political Disinformation’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In February of this year, the unrepentant liar and alleged pervert<\/a>, James O’Keefe, released another in his series of dishonest, pseudo-journalistic video escapades. In it he falsely asserted that Battleground Texas, a local organization that promotes voter participation, had violated state laws while registering citizens to vote.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea Party.
\nSwitch to CREDO Mobile, the progressive cell phone company, today!<\/a><\/p>\n

The News Corpse analysis of the video<\/a> proved that O’Keefe was badly misinterpreting the law and making unfounded accusations against civic-minded volunteers. That is the hallmark of his body of work as a lying propagandist. And he almost always attacks people or organizations<\/a> that seek to assist the poor or other disadvantaged constituencies. The aforementioned analysis said in part that…<\/p>\n

“What O\u2019Keefe did was to clip a portion of the Texas election code that says ‘The registrar may not transcribe, copy, or otherwise record a telephone number furnished on a registration application.’<\/em> What he either fails to understand, or is deliberately misrepresenting, is that this section of the law applies only to the Registrar of Voters and other county officials. It does not apply to the volunteers or organizations that distribute and collect voter registration forms.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now a team of Special Prosecutors in Texas have affirmed that O’Keefe’s video hackery fails to expose any wrongdoing on the part of Battleground Texas. It can’t be over-stressed that these are Texas-based prosecutors who were assigned by a Texan judge to investigate the charges raised by O’Keefe in his video project. The prosecutors report<\/a> concluded that…<\/p>\n

“The Veritas video was little more than a canard and political disinformation. The video was particularly unprofessional when it suggested that the actions of Battleground Texas were advocated by a Texas gubernatorial candidate and the that actions of a single volunteer deputy registrar may even involve private health data, which is not involved in the voter registration process.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The report also explicitly addressed the question of whether the Texas election code prohibited the transcription of voter data, including phone numbers. What they concluded, with citations from the current Texas Attorney General (who is running for governor against Democrat Wendy Davis), is that the “statutory provision applies only to the official county registrar, not to a volunteer deputy registrar.”<\/em> And that just happens to validate the analysis published here on News Corpse two months ago.<\/p>\n

The Special Prosecutors closed their report with a recommendation that “the complaint be dismissed for insufficient evidence and failure to state an offense.”<\/em> The judge agreed and signed the order to dismiss. This marks only the most recent embarrassment for O’Keefe who regularly engages in fraudulent activity in pursuit of his radical, partisan agenda. Some of his other antics have resulted in his arrest and conviction<\/a> in a Louisiana senator’s office and a legal order to pay a $100,000 settlement<\/a> to a former ACORN employee he defamed. He himself has broken voter registration laws<\/a> in a failed attempt to defend suppressive voter ID legislation. And let’s not forget his sleazy plot to seduce a CNN reporter<\/a> aboard his “Love Boat.”<\/em><\/p>\n

O’Keefe has not yet commented on this ruling that certifies his blatantly unethical behavior. It is also notable that none of the media outlets that promoted O’Keefe’s lie-riddled video have bothered to report this legal development. Apparently they don’t think it is newsworthy that their trusted source has been deemed a purveyor of “political disinformation”<\/em> by Texas legal authorities. Amongst those who giddily peddled O’Keefe’s video, but now ignore the legal smackdown, were National Review, Breitbart News, WorldNetDaily, NewsBusters, FreedomWorks, The Daily Caller, Townhall, and Human Events. And of course, Fox News also hyped the video on their Fox Nation (a website that regularly spreads political disinformation and outright lies<\/a>). This is to be expected from the conservative media circus that is only there to distort and confuse rather than to inform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In February of this year, the unrepentant liar and alleged pervert, James O’Keefe, released another in his series of dishonest, pseudo-journalistic video escapades. In it he falsely asserted that Battleground Texas, a local organization that promotes voter participation, had violated state laws while registering citizens to vote. AT&T and Verizon users: Stop funding the Tea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"It's Official: James O'Keefe's Videos Are Legally 'Political Disinformation'","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8],"tags":[639],"class_list":["post-12192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-propaganda","tag-james-okeefe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/okeefe-liar.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-3aE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2105,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=2105","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":0},"title":"James O’Keefe In More Legal Hot Water Over ACORN","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/12\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Convicted criminal James O'Keefe is reportedly being sued by a former ACORN employee who was the reluctant star of one of O'Keefe's videos. Earlier this year O'Keefe was sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine for having trespassed the offices of a United\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9254,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=9254","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":1},"title":"James O’Keefe Agrees To Pay $100,000 To Former ACORN Employee [Update w\/O’Keefe Statement]","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/8\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Having already been convicted of criminal activity in Louisiana, recidivist law-breaker James O'Keefe is now shelling out a hundred grand to one of his victims in the notorious ACORN affair. ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera was surreptitiously videotaped (for which criminal charges are still pending) and falsely portrayed as offering\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4079,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4079","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":2},"title":"James O’Keefe Invokes The Punk’d Defense","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/17\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Serial liar and video manipulator, James O'Keefe, is taking an odd approach to his his defense on charges of making unlawful, recordings. The charges were filed in California in a case involving former ACORN employee Juan Carlos Vera, who was falsely portrayed in a heavily edited videotape as assisting O'Keefe's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7104,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7104","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":3},"title":"James O’Keefe Produces Another Embarrassing Flop","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/15\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Borat of right-wing pseudo-journalism has just released the latest in his attempts to so thoroughly discredit himself that his mother would be ashamed to take his calls. James O'Keefe, a convicted criminal, has been trying to prove that voter fraud in America is at crisis proportions. But the only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7618,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=7618","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":4},"title":"Video Mangler James O’Keefe Strikes (Out) Again","author":"Mark NC","date":"7\/18\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"On some level you have to admire the spunk of crocumentary maker James O'Keefe. It seems that no matter how many times he releases a video project that is quickly debunked, making him the object of ridicule, he bounces back and releases another unphased. In the latest episode, O'Keefe sought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6363,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=6363","url_meta":{"origin":12192,"position":5},"title":"James O\u2019Keefe Reaches New Heights Of Stupidity \u2013 And Irrelevance","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/9\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The biggest joke in the modern era of pseudo-reality television has struck again. Crockumentary videographer James O'Keefe posted a new video purporting to reveal the potential for voter fraud in Minnesota. I'm not going to waste much space refuting the inane premise of his video. That has already been done\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12192"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12196,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12192\/revisions\/12196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}