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Did Pfizer Kill Project Veritas or Was it Ego?
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 organization’s history revealing that Pfizer was conducting “directed evolution” to mutate the coronavirus - something akin to gain of function research.1 Eight days later the organization’s officers and directors decided it was vital that James O’Keefe be ousted from the company. Less than 30 days after the release of the biggest story of his career James O’Keefe 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 organization’s 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 company’s Executive Director Daniel Strack—a former Goldman Sachs Managing Director?3 Maybe they got to Barry Hinkley the company’s Chief Strategy Officer? I realize those are the popular theories but the truth is Project Veritas was destroyed by ego…
Less than a month after Daniel Strack and Barry Hinkley declared an emergency notifying the board of directors they sought to remove James O’Keefe, he gave a heartbreaking farewell speech to the employees of the organization he founded more than a decade earlier. If you’ve got 45 minutes I recommend watching it otherwise I’ll summarize it below and then share my thoughts.4
For more than a year James O’Keefe 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 history—getting a Pfizer director to admit on video the company was engaged in ‘directed evolution’ 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 O’Keefe was on a plane to Nashville to declare an emergency—one 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 company’s Chief Strategy Officer. He joined Project Veritas to raise additional funds to support James’ investigative reporting. Shortly after the Pfizer story broke he clashed with James on how to exploit their success in fundraising—he 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 company’s 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 company’s 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 Strack’s eyes, by firing his CSO and CFO, James was undermining his credibility and undermining his ability to lead the organization. If Strack didn’t 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 didn’t really need James O’Keefe.
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 organization’s mascot for fundraising purposes. As every corporate executive knows the easiest way to find ‘cause’ to fire someone is to closely examine their expenditures and expenses—this is the stick they would use to convince James to accept their proposal. The carrot would be their offer to allow James to save ‘face’ by keeping his ouster ‘secret’ from the organization’s 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 didn’t keep their word. They began working with the board of directors on their plan to oust James O’Keefe 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 O’Keefe’s. In fact, his primary claim to fame is that he is a director of Project Veritas—clout 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 James’ organization saying “Hopefully he falls in line. He’s destroying his own organization.” Strack and Hinkley had convinced Tyrmand that they didn’t need James—Strack would run the day-to-day operations and Hinkley would raise the money. It was Tyrmand’s job to convince the rest of the board that Project Veritas would run much better without O’Keefe. In the back of Tyrmand’s 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
O’Keefe was invited to an unnamed board member’s 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 O’Keefe’s ouster. James was genuinely shocked—as he had just broken the organization’s biggest undercover investigation—why 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 Hinkley’s 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. O’Keefe pushed back explaining that he’d 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 weren’t just lobbying the board they were actively recruiting employees to join their coup—at 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 grievances—grievances they admitted most hadn’t 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 O’Keefe’s 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 O’Keefe 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 donors—sharing their version of events to justify O’Keefe’s new role as ‘mascot’.
February 10, 2023
Despite banishing James from the Project Veritas offices for a ‘much deserved’ two-week vacation officers and directors decided to schedule another board meeting just four days after the first. Presumably, a NEW emergency had occurred—this time justifying holding a board meeting without the organization’s 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 O’Keefe would remain on the board and retain his position as CEO but in name only. What changed? Did James steal another pregnant woman’s sandwich? Why hold yet another emergency board meeting after demanding James take a ‘much deserved’ two-week vacation?
When various Project Veritas donors heard about the second ‘emergency’ board meeting and learned that the plan was to remove O’Keefe 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 O’Keefe’s 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 undeterred—James had to go.
As predicted Tyrmand and the board voted to remove O’Keefe as a director and in retaliation for the Troutman Pepper letter voted to stop paying his salary and providing his health insurance—if 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 board’s 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 wasn’t present.
February 15, 2023
Five days later Daniel Strack, the defacto CEO of Project Veritas, sent the following letter to the organization’s employees, supporters, and donors:
In the letter, Strack paints a false narrative that James O’Keefe is still ‘with’ Project Veritas stating,
“James has not been removed from Project Veritas. Nowhere in that letter was there ever a suggestion to remove James from the organization.”
~ Daniel Strack Executive Director
Strack omits the fact that on February 6th O’Keefe 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 ‘proof of life’ message:
Daniel Strack was clearly lying to anyone who would listen—O’Keefe was clearly no longer ‘with’ Project Veritas as he had been removed from the board and suspended as CEO without pay—you don’t 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 O’Keefe and his mission. That’s what every single donor believed. Every employee, officer, and director was in their role to support O’Keefe. 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 resigned—the 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 mission—the board declined his request and vowed to fight to ensure he could not return as either a director or as the organization’s 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 James’ 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, didn’t realize that James wasn’t married and that the $12,600 was for the company’s Christmas party venue the year before he joined the organization. Strack was especially upset that O’Keefe 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 O’Keefe’s use of hired cars, chartered planes, and improper wedding expenses would result in New York’s AG, Letitia James, stripping the organization’s nonprofit status and potentially prosecuting each director for fraud. It was a full-court press—the directors had no choice if they wanted to save their own skins—remove James or face jail time.
February 20, 2023
James O’Keefe’s 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 “hundreds of other acts of personal inurement” they are careful to note that the list is “merely a small representative sample”.
The first item is particularly interesting as it relates to James’ 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 work—he’d 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 James’ 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 matter—even 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 flights—anything 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 company’s expenditures for years without concern. There was no emergency to remove James—the ‘financial improprieties’ are merely a pretext—a 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 them—Project 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 O’Keefe 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 they’ll 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 issue—and it is—Strack, Hinkley, and Tyrmand will use every last donor dollar to destroy James O’Keefe 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 you’re waiting to decide who is right and who is wrong—you’re the problem. James O’Keefe is a hot mess—a wonderful hot mess that is doing important work. I don’t get all of his antics—the singing, the dancing, stealing sandwiches—but the work he is doing is important. Of course, the 70 people who work at Project Veritas are important—but they aren’t Project Veritas—James is Project Veritas.
This is a follow-up to my previous coverage of the O’Keefe/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.
https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/98a529dc66425a5d2d381afb0b86e6d0/2020-990.pdf
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