{"id":1656330,"date":"2022-09-24T10:49:29","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T14:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1656330"},"modified":"2022-09-24T10:50:47","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T14:50:47","slug":"journalism-is-on-trial-project-veritas-ordered-to-pay-democratic-consulting-firm-over-2016-sting-operation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/journalism-is-on-trial-project-veritas-ordered-to-pay-democratic-consulting-firm-over-2016-sting-operation\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Journalism Is On Trial\u2019: Project Veritas Ordered To Pay Democratic Consulting Firm Over 2016 Sting Operation"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">32<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fjournalism-is-on-trial-project-veritas-ordered-to-pay-democratic-consulting-firm-over-2016-sting-operation%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1656330&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Project Veritas was ordered to pay $120,000 to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/democratic-party\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Democrat<\/a> consulting firm this week after a jury <a href=\"https:\/\/int.nyt.com\/data\/documenttools\/verdict-in-project-veritas-case\/799e87b9a3e1ab3a\/full.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">found<\/a> the organization guilty on charges of breaking federal and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/washington-d-c\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Washington, D.C.<\/a>, wiretapping laws and fraudulent misrepresentation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/topic\/project-veritas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">investigative organization<\/a> was sued by Democracy Partners, a Democrat consulting group, that had been the target of a sting operation by Project Veritas back in 2016, The New York Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/09\/22\/us\/politics\/project-veritas-lawsuit.html\">reported<\/a>. They had accused the group of breaking the law by having an undercover employee receive an internship with the group using a fake identity and making recordings of the firm.<\/p>\n<p>Project Veritas plans on appealing the civil case ruling, and James O\u2019Keefe, the group\u2019s founder, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.projectveritas.com\/news\/project-veritas-announces-appeal-as-democracy-partners-awarded-usd120k-in\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a> that the jury\u2019s decision had major implications for journalism in America.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe jury effectively ruled investigative journalists owe a fiduciary duty to the subjects they are investigating and that investigative journalists may not deceive the subjects they are investigating,\u201d O\u2019Keefe said in a statement following the ruling. \u201cJournalism is on trial, and Project Veritas will continue to fight for every journalist\u2019s right to news gather, investigate, and expose wrongdoing \u2013 regardless of how powerful the investigated party may be. Project Veritas will not be intimidated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The jury ruled that Allison Maass, who had interned with Democracy Partners as part of Project Veritas\u2019s investigation, had a fiduciary duty to the group that she broke by secretly recording them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=5IuJGHuIkzY\">videos<\/a> recorded by Maass appeared to show Robert Creamer of Democracy Partners and another Democratic operative suggesting that they incite violence at rallies for then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Creamer claimed that he lost roughly half a million dollars in contracts because of the videos, according to the NYT. He said in a statement after the jury\u2019s ruling that he hoped it would dissuade Project Veritas from \u201cconducting political spy operations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHopefully, the decision today will help to discourage Mr. O\u2019Keefe and others from conducting these kind of political spy operations and publishing selectively edited, misleading videos in the future,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Paul Calli, the lawyer who defended Project Veritas, said that the videos were an example of \u201cthe finest American tradition called muckraking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Calli also pointed to potential First Amendment implications of the trial, saying that the legal battle was not yet over.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe folks on my Left prefer to ignore that fact and will spike the ball and celebrate on Twitter because in this case the journalist isn\u2019t someone they \u2018like\u2019 or agree with and instead exposed the soft white underbelly of their party. We will see what the finish line brings,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Veritas was ordered to pay $120,000 to a Democrat consulting firm this week after a jury found the organization guilty on charges of breaking federal and Washington, D.C., wiretapping laws and fraudulent misrepresentation.\u00a0 The investigative organization was sued by Democracy Partners, a Democrat consulting group, that had been the target of a sting operation &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1656332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1656330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1656332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}