BREAKING: James O’Keefe Wins Lawsuit!
On July 5, 2023, a case was won by James O’Keefe. A defamation lawsuit brought by John Bonifield, a former CNN employee, against O’Keefe and Project Veritas, was dismissed by a federal judge in New York City.
The lawsuit was the result of a Project Veritas sting operation in 2017, during which O’Keefe and his team pretended to be Donald Trump supporters and secretly recorded Bonifield criticizing CNN and its coverage of the candidate. Asserting that the sting operation had harmed his reputation and caused him emotional distress, Bonifield filed a defamation lawsuit against O’Keefe and Project Veritas.
As a result of Bonifield’s inability to demonstrate that O’Keefe and Project Veritas had acted with genuine malice, the judge dismissed the claim. The judge determined that the sting operation was a reasonable endeavor to look into CNN’s treatment of Trump, and as such, was protected by the First Amendment.
A noteworthy legal victory for the conservative activist is O’Keefe’s triumph in the Bonifield litigation. O’Keefe has won several court cases in the past, including ones against ACORN and Planned Parenthood.
Read More: Did President Trump Just Call Out MTG and Lindsay Graham?
James O’Keefe has been fighting against America’s most corrupt laws and institutions for years, and as a result of his efforts, the public is much more aware of organizations like Pfizer and BlackRock.
Of course, the renowned investigative journalist has encountered difficulties—who want the political, cultural, and corporate elite exposed?—but who does?
Read More: Donald Trump Wins in Oregon
Oregon’s Law 165.540(1)(c), which forbade recording people without their permission, was one of these barriers.
In order to challenge the law, O’Keefe filed the lawsuit PVA vs. Schmidt in 2020. On Monday, he joyfully announced that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down the illegal law. O’Keefe announced the information in a tweet:
PORTLAND, Ore. (OMG) The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has OVERTURNED the law that prohibits recording in the state of Oregon on the grounds it violates the 1st Amendment.
I filed the lawsuit (PVA v Schmidt) with attorneys Benjamin Barr and Steve Klein at the Marc O. Hatfield courthouse in Chapman Square in downtown Portland with heavy security three years ago.
Oregon Revised Statute 165.540(1)(c). This law prohibited anyone from making an audio recording unless that person “specifically informed” others they were recording. But the law also included special permissions from the government to allow for the non-notified recording of the police, but not any other government employee.
That just leaves the government putting its thumb on the lens of news-gathering, deciding which news is easiest to get, and skewing reporting. As the Ninth Circuit has explained before, whatever concerns Oregon has over shoddy reporting or “fake news,” the remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true and not the suppression of speech.
Oregon has no power to protect the conversational privacy of some people in a public place from the First Amendment-protected news-gathering of other individuals. Because the law lets government distort the news-gathering process and bans entirely too much effective journalism, it violated the First Amendment on its face.
Circuit Judge Sandra S. Ikuta out of the 9th circuit in Pasadena, California authored the opinion. Ikuta wrote, “Oregon does not have a compelling interest in protecting individuals’ conversational privacy from other individuals’ protected speech in places open to the public, even if that protected speech consists of creating audio or visual recordings of other people.”
