Undercover videos by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas have provided humiliation to a number of liberal networks, including CNN when a network executive was on video boasting of its use of “propaganda” to get President Trump voted out of office. O’Keefe now could be delivering more humiliation to the network, by suing for defamation.
Project Veritas had reported in its video that Charlie Chester, a CNN executive, said, “Look what we did, [CNN] got Trump out. I am 100% going to say it, and I 100% believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out … I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that.”
Now Fox News is reporting that Project Veritas is suing CNN for defamation because when Twitter suspended its account, CNN claimed that suspension was for “misinformation.”
O’Keefe said he would launch the case in Georgia, where CNN’s headquarters operations are located.
It was CNN anchor Ana Cabrera who said back in February that Twitter was trying “to stop the spread of misinformation,” and specifically cited the suspension of Project Veritas.
The report explains O’Keefe believes he can prove malice on the part of Cabrera because of social-media statements she posted before the report, in which she quoted a Twitter spokesperson who cited the private information policy that resulted in the permanent ban of Project Veritas’ account.
That would mean she would have known the suspension was not, in fact, for “misinformation.”
O’Keefe’s action reads, “Project Veritas is an investigative journalism organization whose reputation depends on its ethical and transparent conduct, and its production of reliable and accurate news reporting. By claiming Project Veritas was ‘spreading misinformation,’ CNN directly damaged and impugned Project Veritas’s reputation. CNN’s factual claim that Project Veritas was banned for ‘promoting misinformation,’ instead of truthful reporting of private facts, is patently and demonstrably false, and CNN maliciously made its claims with knowledge they were false or with reckless disregard for their falsity.”
Only a week earlier O’Keefe sued Twitter over his account suspension, announced by the tech giant which claimed he ran “fake accounts” on the platform, which he denied.
That suspension came just as Project Veritas was releasing a series of videos revealing Chester’s claims about CNN. The Federalist reported that Twitter refused to provide any evidence to back its claim about O’Keefe.
O’Keefe also has filed a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, and he won an important early round when a judge refused to dismiss the case.
The Times had claimed that Project Veritas’ report on alleged vote fraud in a Minnesota congressional district represented by Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, was “deceptive,” “false” and “with no verifiable evidence.”
Times reporters can now be deposed under oath after Justice Charles D. Wood of the Supreme Court of New York in Westchester County denied the paper’s motion to dismiss the case.
The judge, in his order, found “a substantial basis in law and fact that the defendants acted with actual malice, that is, with knowledge that the statements in the article were false or made with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not.”
The Times defended its reporting by calling it an “unverifiable expression of opinion.” But the judge said, “If a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader – that it is opinion.”
O’Keefe’s series on CNN included the first video, in which Chester admitted to using propaganda to benefit Joe Biden.
See the first Project Veritas video:
Chester admitted “that his network engaged in propaganda to benefit Biden’s candidacy.”
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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
