At the end of the day, Daniel Strack, Barry Hinkley, and a handful of rogue directors decided they could run Project Veritas without James O'Keefe and that is why they ousted him.
Last month Project Veritas broke the biggest story in the news organizationâs history revealing that Pfizer was conducting âdirected evolutionâ to mutate the coronavirus - something akin to gain of function research.1 Eight days later the organizationâs officers and directors decided it was vital that James OâKeefe be ousted from the company. Less than 30 days after the release of the biggest story of his career James OâKeefe was unemployed and for all intents and purposes, Project Veritas was dead.
Why did the officers and directors decide to act in such a reckless manner and act with such haste? It was entirely foreseeable that removing the face and founder of Project Veritas would destroy the organizationâs credibility with whistleblowers and cripple its ability to raise money. Could it have something to do with the fact James and Project Veritas took aim at a $250 billion dollar pharmaceutical giant owned by Blackrock?2 Could they have applied pressure to the companyâs Executive Director Daniel Strackâa former Goldman Sachs Managing Director?3 Maybe they got to Barry Hinkley the companyâs Chief Strategy Officer? I realize those are the popular theories but the truth is Project Veritas was destroyed by egoâŚ
Less than a month after Daniel Strack and Barry Hinkley declared an emergency notifying the board of directors they sought to remove James OâKeefe, he gave a heartbreaking farewell speech to the employees of the organization he founded more than a decade earlier. If youâve got 45 minutes I recommend watching it otherwise Iâll summarize it below and then share my thoughts.4
For more than a year James OâKeefe and his team worked on a story about Pfizer in an attempt to get to the truth about the pandemic and the vaccines. When his reporter doubted himself James encouraged him to stay the course and trust the process. James knew that impactful investigative reporting is filled with countless setbacks and takes a lot of time and effort. But in early 2023 the efforts of the Project Veritas team were rewarded as the organization broke the biggest story in its historyâgetting a Pfizer director to admit on video the company was engaged in âdirected evolutionâ to mutate the coronavirus. The story took the world by storm generating more than 100 million views and providing Project Veritas with its most powerful fundraising tool ever.
February 2, 2023
Barry Hinkley and Daniel Strack waited until James OâKeefe was on a plane to Nashville to declare an emergencyâone that could only be addressed by ousting James from the organization. It had been just eight days since the Pfizer story broke.
Barry Hinkley (he/him) was recruited by Daniel Strack just four months earlier as the companyâs Chief Strategy Officer. He joined Project Veritas to raise additional funds to support Jamesâ investigative reporting. Shortly after the Pfizer story broke he clashed with James on how to exploit their success in fundraisingâhe clashed so publicly with James that he was ultimately fired. He then sent this text to every Project Veritas employee:
Daniel Strack had been recruited early last year to serve as the companyâs Executive Director. Daniel was previously a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs and it was hoped he could provide the day-to-day professional leadership the organization needed given the fact that James traveled 300+ days per year raising money, headlining events, and doing investigative journalism.
Strack sees himself as a sophisticated and professional operator. In his mind, he was hired to be the companyâs real CEO only allowing James to keep the title for optics. Strack was building the organization around himself with the sort of cult of personality that one might find surrounding a Goldman Sachs Managing Director (a role Strack washed out of in record time). In Strackâs eyes, by firing his CSO and CFO, James was undermining his credibility and undermining his ability to lead the organization. If Strack didnât think he could do his job with James as his boss the rational answer was to resign and allow James to find someone he could work with. The irrational answer, driven by ego, was to think Project Veritas didnât really need James OâKeefe.
With James out of the office, Strack and Hinkley hatched a plan to convince James to step down from his official roles to become the organizationâs mascot for fundraising purposes. As every corporate executive knows the easiest way to find âcauseâ to fire someone is to closely examine their expenditures and expensesâthis is the stick they would use to convince James to accept their proposal. The carrot would be their offer to allow James to save âfaceâ by keeping his ouster âsecretâ from the organizationâs supporters and donors. Strack agreed to give James a few days to think about it before calling for a board meeting on February 6th.
February 3, 2023
Of course, Strack and Hinkley didnât keep their word. They began working with the board of directors on their plan to oust James OâKeefe from the organization in earnest. Strack believed that one director, in particular, could be convinced to oust James. Matthew Tyrmand is a former conservative journalist whose star never seemed to shine as brightly as OâKeefeâs. In fact, his primary claim to fame is that he is a director of Project Veritasâclout he has repeatedly used to attack former President Trump calling him an unhinged clown.5 Joe Barton, another Project Veritas director, began reaching out to various Project Veritas employees to see how they would feel about the plan to oust O'Keefe. In one instance he texted an unnamed reporter and offered to give them a raise once James was removed:
Note how Tyrmand admits that Project Veritas is actually Jamesâ organization saying âHopefully he falls in line. Heâs destroying his own organization.â Strack and Hinkley had convinced Tyrmand that they didnât need JamesâStrack would run the day-to-day operations and Hinkley would raise the money. It was Tyrmandâs job to convince the rest of the board that Project Veritas would run much better without OâKeefe. In the back of Tyrmandâs head, he knew that Strack and Hinkley would need his help and likely offer him a full-time position with the company once James was gone (let me know when he joins the team).
February 5, 2023
OâKeefe was invited to an unnamed board memberâs home on Sunday to discuss the situation. Strack and Hinkley had primed the pump with trumped-up concerns about inappropriate sexual relationships, extravagant expenditures, improper expense reimbursements, and overall turmoil within the organization to justify OâKeefeâs ouster. James was genuinely shockedâas he had just broken the organizationâs biggest undercover investigationâwhy was everyone so concerned about these things now?
The director, for his part, had been told that James does nothing more than sail around in his little boat coming in at the 11th hour to take credit for all of Strack and Hinkleyâs hard work. He confronted James explaining that he was too much of a liability for the organization given his failure to contribute anything of value. OâKeefe pushed back explaining that heâd been working with the reporter for over a year and that he was intimately involved in the Pfizer story.
February 6, 2023
Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand werenât just lobbying the board they were actively recruiting employees to join their coupâat least in one case offering raises to those who showed them loyalty. By the morning of the 6th, they had managed to convince 16 employees to sign their names to a list of grievancesâgrievances they admitted most hadnât witnessed or known about until Strack, Hinkley, and/or Tyrmand had informed them. Employees were invited one by one to share their various grievances with the board for over six hours. The complaints ranged from OâKeefeâs preference to take hired cars instead of Uber to their embarrassment of having to watch their boss chase a Twitter executive through the streets of New York. The board had already made its decision and the six-hour struggle session was designed to demoralize OâKeefe enough to get him to agree to their offer to replace Retracto as the Project Veritas mascot. The board meetings reflect what happened next:
With that James left the office and began his mandated two weeks of paid leave. Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand believed that two weeks would give them enough time to explain the situation to key employees and donorsâsharing their version of events to justify OâKeefeâs new role as âmascotâ.
February 10, 2023
Despite banishing James from the Project Veritas offices for a âmuch deservedâ two-week vacation officers and directors decided to schedule another board meeting just four days after the first. Presumably, a NEW emergency had occurredâthis time justifying holding a board meeting without the organizationâs founder and CEO. Just four days earlier the board had decided to strip O'Keefe of his powers as CEO transferring them to Daniel Strack but they decided OâKeefe would remain on the board and retain his position as CEO but in name only. What changed? Did James steal another pregnant womanâs sandwich? Why hold yet another emergency board meeting after demanding James take a âmuch deservedâ two-week vacation?
When various Project Veritas donors heard about the second âemergencyâ board meeting and learned that the plan was to remove OâKeefe as a director they hired a billion-dollar law firm called Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP to draft a cease and desist letter to Tyrmand and his fellow board members warning them NOT to further reduce OâKeefeâs role in the organization and to STOP using donor contributions to fund the effort to remove him. The letter was delivered on February 9th but Tyrmand and his fellow board members were undeterredâJames had to go.
As predicted Tyrmand and the board voted to remove OâKeefe as a director and in retaliation for the Troutman Pepper letter voted to stop paying his salary and providing his health insuranceâif James wanted a fight he would have to do it while collecting unemployment and paying for COBRA.
Of course, as various donors heard about Tyrmand and the boardâs action, they began voicing their concerns privately and publicly. One donor, in particular, who was mentioned in the original employee grievance letter from the 6th recorded this message denying the claims made about her. In response, Hinkley claimed she was lying despite the fact that he would have no way of knowing as he wasnât present.
February 15, 2023
Five days later Daniel Strack, the defacto CEO of Project Veritas, sent the following letter to the organizationâs employees, supporters, and donors:
In the letter, Strack paints a false narrative that James OâKeefe is still âwithâ Project Veritas stating,
âJames has not been removed from Project Veritas. Nowhere in that letter was there ever a suggestion to remove James from the organization.â
~ Daniel Strack Executive Director
Strack omits the fact that on February 6th OâKeefe was stripped of his powers as CEO, effectively being demoted as Strack began reporting directly to the board. He further omits the fact that on February 10th - just five days earlier - James had been removed from the board and effectively fired as he was no longer receiving a salary or health benefits. Then later in the day, Strack had the Project Veritas Twitter account retweet the following âproof of lifeâ message:
Daniel Strack was clearly lying to anyone who would listenâOâKeefe was clearly no longer âwithâ Project Veritas as he had been removed from the board and suspended as CEO without payâyou donât get much more unemployed than that.
February 16, 2023
At the end of the day, Project Veritas was always simply a vehicle designed to support James OâKeefe and his mission. Thatâs what every single donor believed. Every employee, officer, and director was in their role to support OâKeefe. Imagine if Harpo Inc. president(s) Erik Logan and Sheri Salata decided Oprah Winfrey was just too hard to work with. Should they remove her and destroy the company or perhaps should they resign so that Oprah could find someone better suited to her style? The answer is the latter not the former and the same is true for Project Veritas.
Could James continue his mission if Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand resignedâthe answer is clearly yes. He did it before and he could easily do it again. As a result, in an effort to save the organization he founded more than a decade earlier, James sent the board a letter asking them to resign prior to his scheduled return on February 20th. He pledged to find new directors and officers who could better support him and his missionâthe board declined his request and vowed to fight to ensure he could not return as either a director or as the organizationâs CEO.
Over the next four days, facing massive backlash from former Project Veritas supporters, Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand began sharing more serious allegations against James with the board and various media outlets including the Daily Beast. One allegation that Hinkley shared was that he had uncovered proof that Jamesâ billed the company $12,600 to pay for his wedding at the Highland Country Club. Hinkley, having been with the company for only a few months, didnât realize that James wasnât married and that the $12,600 was for the companyâs Christmas party venue the year before he joined the organization. Strack was especially upset that OâKeefe used hired cars when he traveled estimating that he could have saved almost $135,000 by using Uber. Strack attempted to convince the board that OâKeefeâs use of hired cars, chartered planes, and improper wedding expenses would result in New Yorkâs AG, Letitia James, stripping the organizationâs nonprofit status and potentially prosecuting each director for fraud. It was a full-court pressâthe directors had no choice if they wanted to save their own skinsâremove James or face jail time.
February 20, 2023
James OâKeefeâs farewell address:
Shortly after James recorded his farewell address the Project Veritas board released a letter6 rebutting some of his claims and citing a list of financial improprieties including:
Despite including the line âhundreds of other acts of personal inurementâ they are careful to note that the list is âmerely a small representative sampleâ.
Lucky Charms II
The first item is particularly interesting as it relates to Jamesâ sailboat Lucky Charms II. During my various conversations with disgruntled Project Veritas employees and alumni, the sailboat was brought up time and time again. One former executive told me that James never did any workâheâd be on his sailboat morning, noon, and night only to come in to record a quick video, yell at the staff, and take all of the credit. The fact that the board chose to include an expense related to the sailboat at the top of their list of grievances is telling.
Interestingly, the current Executive Director disputed this claim when he described James as the hardest-working person he had ever met. He stated that James is on the road for the organization 300 days a year - the typical employee only works 220 days. Given the fact that Project Veritas depends on Jamesâ ability and willingness to travel to raise millions of dollars while conducting his investigative reporting, it would be reasonable AND legal for the organization to provide him a charter to return flight home to deal with a personal matterâeven one that included meeting a sailboat repairman. But James, the hardest-working person Daniel Strack has ever met, decided to kill two birds with one stone meeting a potential donor after meeting the sailboat repairman. All perfectly reasonable and legal.
Dr. Robert Malone outlined the scheme hatched by Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand to remove O'Keefe perfectly7:
The scheme usually involves fake claims of financial improprieties, such as drawing attention to office-party expenses or chartered flightsâanything to make management look like bums and robbers who need to be monitored and controlled by committees hand-picked by the board.
Once the decision is made to oust the guy, he really has no chance. All that remains is the need to find a pretext. Next thing you know, the unthinkable happens: the hardest working, most innovative, and most effective person at the top is out. The board gets to keep the money. The disgruntled employees get their pound of flesh. Everyone who stabbed the guy in the back gets a raise.
At the end of the day, both the board and the executive director have been well aware of the companyâs expenditures for years without concern. There was no emergency to remove Jamesâthe âfinancial improprietiesâ are merely a pretextâa pretext that will ultimately fail. Even if Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand were acting in good faith not a single person in the world will believe themâProject Veritas, under their control, is dead.
Every single expenditure/expense cited by the board could either be explained and/or accounted for as income by James by restating tax returns. From what I can see it is clear that OâKeefe is not getting paid nearly enough for someone who travels for the organization 300 days a year and is responsible for raising almost two million dollars a month from donors.
For example, a nonprofit newspaper here called the Texas Tribute raises about $12 million a year from various federal, state, and local grants and they pay the CEO Evan Smith $425,000 a year.8 Compare that to James O'Keefe's salary of $396,000 a year despite being responsible for raising more than $20 million a year from private donors while speaking at events and engaging in actual journalism.9 If James were a political fundraiser (doing nothing else) he'd receive between 10-15% of the money he raised in compensation - at least $2.5M a year.
If the Project Veritas board is actually interested in saving Project Veritas theyâll reinstate James, help fix the accounting/tax issues, give James a raise, and work with him to replace anyone (including themselves) who is uncomfortable with his style. Sadly, if this is an ego issueâand it isâStrack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand will use every last donor dollar to destroy James OâKeefe out of spite. They will tie him up in court. They will sully his name. They will attempt to stop donors from backing his new company. They will attempt to prevent employees from joining his team.
If youâre waiting to decide who is right and who is wrongâyouâre the problem. James OâKeefe is a hot messâa wonderful hot mess that is doing important work. I donât get all of his anticsâthe singing, the dancing, stealing sandwichesâbut the work he is doing is important. Of course, the 70 people who work at Project Veritas are importantâbut they arenât Project VeritasâJames is Project Veritas.
This is a follow-up to my previous coverage of the OâKeefe/Project Veritas drama:
To be clear, I have no personal knowledge of any of the events described in this article. The information has been obtained from public domain sources and confidential informants. There may be instances where either my source or I or both mixed up a name. For example, many of the actions taken by Hinkley, Strack, and Tyrmand were taken by one or more of the individuals - in some cases, actions attributed to Strack may have actually been carried out by Hinkley. In cases where I suggest someone is lying or attribute intent, I am merely speculating based on the available information and providing my opinion. If I have made any error please DM me on Twitter and I will attempt to correct the mistake as soon as possible.
