WASHINGTON — Perhaps the most explosive revelation of recent days didn’t come from WikiLeaks, but from an undercover investigation by the conservative political activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Action.
The investigation, Part I of which was released on YouTube on Monday, found direct coordination between Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and political consultants to incite violence and “anarchy” at Donald Trump rallies.
Rumors of paid agitators have circulated for the duration of the presidential race, but these murmurs were unconfirmed until Clinton campaign and DNC insiders were caught on video describing the full extent of the practice.
The four-part series, “Rigging the Election,” is not O’Keefe’s first foray into undercover journalism. But the latest series initially was met with skepticism due to accusations that O’Keefe had selectively editing video footage to make false allegations in the past. The Washington Post reported on Wednesday:
“O’Keefe’s 2009 sting of ACORN [a nonprofit voter registration and community activism group] led to the destruction of that group; a 2011 sting of NPR executives led to two resignations. Subsequent investigations found discrepancies between how the undercover journalists approached their targets and how they packaged what the targets said.”
In addition to O’Keefe’s latest undercover investigation, more evidence of efforts to pay and train activists to disrupt GOP events can also be found in WikiLeaks’ ongoing release of the emails of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman:
In the Project Veritas video, Clinton campaign operatives admit to inducing the notorious, headline-topping violence at multiple events, including the violent, belligerent clash in Chicago in March that forced the Trump campaign to cancel a planned rally.
“So, the Chicago protest, when they shut all that, that was us,” Aaron Minter, who goes by the name Aaron Black in an apparent attempt to shield his identity, tells the undercover journalists. “It was more him [Bob Creamer, founder of Democracy Partners] than me; but none of this was supposed to come back to us, because we want it coming from people, we don’t want it to come from the [Democratic] party.”
Project Veritas infiltrated the consulting firm Democracy Partners and its contractor, the Foval Group, to expose the methodological agitation known as “bird dogging.” In the process, the investigation sheds light on both organizations’ overt and deliberately covert ties to the Clinton campaign.
“So, if we do a protest, and if it’s branded a DNC protest, right away the press is going to say ‘partisan,’” Minter explains. “But if I’m in there coordinating with all the groups on the ground and sort of playing field general, but they are the ones talking to the cameras, then it’s actually ‘people.’ But if we send out press advisories with ‘DNC’ on them and ‘Clinton campaign,’ [it] doesn’t have that same effect.”
“What I call it is conflict engagement,” Scott Foval, founder of the Foval Group and national field director of Americans United for Change, a pro-Clinton advocacy group, explains. “Conflict engagement in, in the lines at Trump rallies. We’re starting anarchy here.”
‘The campaign is fully in it’
The footage shows the extent to which this shadowy machine coordinates with Clinton campaign insiders to ensure GOP and Trump supporters will appear to be racist, violent, and unstable individuals in order to discredit their legitimacy in the public eye.
“It doesn’t matter what the friggin’ legal and ethics people say; we need to win this motherfucker,” Foval says.
Stunningly, as the undercover journalists learned, Hillary Clinton may be fully aware of these nefarious acts.
“Hillary, like, is aware of all the work that you guys do, I hope,” a female undercover journalist for Project Veritas says at the beginning of the video.
“The campaign is fully in it,” Creamer replies.
“The [Hillary Clinton] campaign pays the DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, Foval Group goes and executes this shit on the ground,” Foval says.
Footage later shows him describing his relationship with, and admiration for, Creamer:
“I work with Bob Creamer, one to one, all the time. I’m the white hat, Democracy Partners is kind of the dark hat … Bob Creamer is diabolical and I love him for it.”
He also explains how the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and super PACs keep open a constant line of communication, even though such contact is a direct violation federal campaign coordination laws.
“The campaigns and DNC cannot go near Priorities [USA, Clinton’s Super PAC], but I guaran-damn-tee you that the people who run the super PACs all talk to each other and we and a few other people are the hubs of that communication,” Foval explains, clarifying that contact as “a text conversation that never ends” or “an ongoing Pony Express.”
“It’s not as efficient as it could be,” he adds, “but that’s because the law doesn’t allow it to.”
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that both Foval and Creamer “lost their jobs” in the fallout from “Rigging the Election.”
‘There’s a script’
Project Veritas learned that Foval and his associates pay and train agitators to shake up events involving the GOP. Today, this specifically refers to events featuring Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, but prior to their nomination, agitators inflamed tensions at other Republican rallies.
“There’s a script,” Foval asserts. “There’s a script of engagement. Sometimes the crazies bite, and sometimes the crazies don’t bite.”
He later explains:
“They’re starting confrontations in the line [outside rallies and events]. Right? They’re not starting confrontations in the rally, because once they’re in the rally they’re under Secret Service’s control. When they’re outside the rally, the media will cover it no matter where it happens.”
“The key,” he says, “is initiating the conflict by having leading conversations with people who are naturally psychotic.”
Outside these events, Foval notes, agitators often wear t-shirts with messages considered to be in conflict with GOP messaging and confront Trump’s supporters. This is meant to directly provoke a confrontation and “draw them to punch” the agitator.
But hiring, paying, and coordinating agitators can be risky, Foval tells the undercover journalists, because “what we don’t need is for it to show up on CNN that the DNC paid for X people to … that’s just not going to happen.”