James O'Keefe launches countersuit against Project Veritas, alleges defamation, breach of contract

James O'Keefe of OMG has launched a countersuit against Project Veritas, a company he founded and helmed until February 2023. Project Veritas sued their founder in May of that year, and now, O'Keefe is bringing his own claims against the group. O'Keefe was put on leave, at first for two weeks and then indefintely, which he has said was an attempt to force his resignation, and he later offered that.

In the countersuit obtained by The Post Millennial, O'Keefe accuses the Project Veritas Board of materially breaching the employment agreement when he was stripped of his position, compensation, and ability to do his work, "which proximately and directly damaged" him. O'Keefe offers a counterclaim of defamation, alleging that the "Board members acted negligently, at minimum, in regards to the truth or falsity of their statements."

Tweets from Board members are included in the documentation, showing remarks and assertions they had made publicly about O'Keefe during the course of the dispute and the suit brought by Project Veritas against O'Keefe. These include calling O'Keefe a "sociopathic liar," stating that "everyone who ever worked for/with him feels exactly the same on this point." O'Keefe was called "evil" and accused of "criminality" in these public tweets from Project Veritas Board member Matthew Tyrmand.

Further, private facts were published by Board members, the case reads. "Project Veritas published personal and private communications of an intimate nature, by providing them to wrongdoers for that express purpose, including but not limited to the Twitter Account 'James O’Keefe The Panty Thief.' In doing so, PV published matters concerning O’Keefe’s private life," the suit reads.

"The disclosure of O’Keefe’s private messages was a gross violation of O’Keefe’s privacy and highly offensive to a reasonable person," the suit reads.

Additional claims include the intentional infliction of emotional distress, that "Plaintiffs intentionally inflicted severe emotional distress on O’Keefe by deliberately humiliating him in front of the PV staff to create an unbearably hostile work environment and force O’Keefe to resign." Other breaches are also alleged.

The suit also gives a glimpse into the background of the case, and O'Keefe's account of what happened during the period of time when he left the company.

The document lays out a timeline of events that led to the removal of O'Keefe and the demise of Project Veritas.

It all began, the suit states, in early February 2023 when O'Keefe was confronted by the company's CFO over a pricey helicopter trip. O'Keefe, who had used helicopters before with no issue, fired the CFO, Tom O'Hara. The board, comprised of O'Keefe, Matthew Tyrmand, and John Garvey convened an emergency meeting, during which Tyrmand proposed adding more people to that board. O'Keefe objected, but they were added anyway. Additional people were added to the meeting.

"Ahead of the meeting, Tyrmand had lined up cherry-picked disgruntled current and former employee 'observers' to attend by phone and speak. Other employees, previously happy in their positions, were invited to attend and listen," the suit reads. Grievances were read into the record, along with transgressions by O'Keefe. The board reinstated the fired CFO, put O'Keefe on leave, removed his ability to hire or fire people for 180 days, took his credit card, and restricted his access to the company's "proprietary information."

As O'Keefe was on leave, the board determined that he had engaged in "serial misspending." Shortly thereafter, a letter of employee complaints was issued. O'Keefe's leave went from two weeks paid leave to indefinite unpaid leave in what the suit alleges was an attempt to "force O'Keefe's voluntary resignation." O'Keefe said he could resign or the board could, and when the board did not, he tendered his resignation from the company he founded in 2011. He was replaced at the helm by the woman he founded it with. Those with Project Veritas maintained that O'Keefe was not ousted.

"Over a matter of a few days," the suit reads in the introduction, "a Board — ironically, dedicated to truth and transparency— engaged in a calculated ambush of its founder, stripping him of authority and publicly humiliating him in front of the very team he had assembled. This was not a measured response to legitimate concerns, but a premeditated coup that ignored years of successful leadership and the unique value O'Keefe brought to the organization."

"The Board's actions," it continues, "cloaked in the language of corporate governance, revealed a profound and willfully obtuse misunderstanding of what made Project Veritas special. They failed to grasp that O'Keefe was not merely an employee, but the beating heart of an organization that thrived on his vision, his connections, and his public persona. In their myopic focus on alleged expense reports and management styles, they lost sight of the forest for the trees, jeopardizing the very mission they were sworn to uphold."

"These counterclaims are not merely about contractual disputes or corporate governance," the suit goes on to say. "They are about the willful destruction of a unique institution in American journalism. They are about a small group of individuals who, entrusted with safeguarding a vital public watchdog, instead chose to put it down. The Board's actions have not only harmed James O'Keefe personally but have deprived the public of a crucial voice at a time when investigative journalism is needed more than ever."

O'Keefe went on to found OMG, a media company that notably has his name in it, as it stands for O'Keefe Media Group. Most of the Project Veritas staff was laid off.

OMG Counter Claims Project Veritas by The Post Millennial on Scribd