"John Fund References James O'Keefe's Videos as Evidence of Voter Fraud"

Published on Nov 29, 2016

On November 28, 2016, political commentator John Fund credited James O'Keefe and Project Veritas Action with uncovering evidence of voter fraud on Fox News.

NJO: Title, video and blurb from James O'Keefe's YouTube channel Project Veritas Action.

I'm going to try from now on to put more annotation to posts than just the attribution and labels.

So, here we have the "political commentator" John Fund talking to Tucker Carlson on Fox News. Like Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway and many other religious right politicos, he is or at various points has been a member of the secretive Dominionist meetup club The Council for National Policy. 

Fund is frequently one of the first people to promote James' videos after they've dropped, through Twitter and by posting articles about them on conservative websites, especially if said videos have a "voter fraud" angle. Indeed, Fund's tweeting about a new video is often timed so closely to James uploading said video and tweeting about it himself that one would almost suspect they have an arrangement going on. Daily Mail US Political Editor David Martosko is another who regularly does this.

Here's an archived article from 2001 about John Fund being a creep. Below is the recorded phone conversation that accompanied the article. It's John Fund talking to the possibly unbalanced younger woman he got pregnant, being all who-said-what-and-when about what-the-fuck-ever and (briefly) mansplaining his position on abortion. Here's the transcript. Credit goes to John Connolly on the defunct website weaselsearch.com.

Choice quote from the transcript:

"I never told you I was a strict right-to-lifer. I have respect for life and I also make judgment calls and I also have variations on that theme."
                                                     - John Fund

James O’Keefe in Defense of Taping Mitch McConnell, and Everyone Else

By James O'Keefe

April 15th 2013, 4:45 am

Anti-taping laws hurt democracy by shielding the powers that be from accountability, writes provocateur James O’Keefe.

“Break in, bribe, seduce and lie; anything to break through that palace guard and get the story,” said investigative reporter Robert Scheer, according to a article by Abbie Hoffman in a decades-old edition of Mother Jones magazine. Sometimes I’ve broken through the palace guards, and other times the palace guards have nearly broken me. What didn’t jail me made me stronger and smarter. I’ve become all too familiar with civil and criminal statutes that are bad for democracy because they insolate those vested in a public trust from democratic accountability.

Those embroiled in fraud rarely make unprovoked admissions of licentious behavior, which is precisely why covert tactics are effective in exposing the truth. Yet the problem lies in the consequences of applying Scheer’s rule. If I were on the left, pushing the legal limits of recordings by secretly taping meetings of the National Rifle Association, I’d be a cause célèbre and win awards for journalistic excellence. Because my passion so far has been exposing government-funded sacred cows and disrupting statist narratives, I am an apostate. Therein the tragedy lies; a free press is supposed to defend the rights of journalists with whom they disagree. It’s not just ignoble for the mainstream to ignore my First Amendment crises when they’ve arisen; journalists who reflexively call for my prosecution put themselves outside their own values, assuming that support for the First Amendment is one of them. They must now confront these values head-on as surreptitious recordings spark a mainstream renaissance, opening the floodgates to a veritable constitutional crisis over privacy, consent, and the ability to protect anonymous whistleblowers.

Mother Jones magazine’s Washington bureau chief, David Corn, recently won a Polk journalism award after publishing a series of clandestine recordings. Writing later about how he came into possession of the tape, Corn noted that the recording raised a “question of possible criminal prosecution” in Florida, a two-party-consent state. His lawyers advised Scott Prouty (the bartender who captured then candidate Romney’s now famous “47 percent” comments), his anonymous source at the time, to “shut up and keep your head low.” This week, Corn stands to win another journalism award from Ithaca College for “outstanding achievement in independent media,” a week after a recording was released that captured a private conversation in Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky campaign office. Corn’s latest story could trigger felony eavesdropping charges. The FBI is investigating, and an official in the group Progress Kentucky has subsequently resigned, saying he “does not condone any allegations of illegal activity that might have taken place.” The murky nature of the Kentucky law makes it unclear whether it’s legal to record a barely audible conversation, according to NBC News. Sadly, rather than being viewed from the onset as a freedom-of-press issue, these debates split neatly down party lines, contingent upon who’s being investigated.

I received a unique education in this murkiness. My punishment—and I’m hardly the first journalist to be put through the legal wringer for aggressively pursuing the truth—changed my behavior. I’m hesitant to go into federal buildings, for example. I haven’t been arrested again for a reason.
But it also forced me to take my work to a new level. I may or may not have tapes of a federal employee committing fraud. I’ve spent the last few days with lawyers dissecting 18 U.S.C. § 1001, prohibiting anyone from making “materially false,” fictitious, or fraudulent statements to the federal government. Whether an undercover reporter fibbing about a scenario is making a “materially false” statement is any lawyer’s guess. There is virtually no case law on this point, and no analysis of the two cases where the statue is discussed. Anybody who tells a harmless fib to a federal-government employee potentially risks everything; we are not talking about a slap on the wrist, we are talking about a quarter-million dollar fine, a felony conviction, and the destruction of one’s reputation in the media. Therefore, the federal government is shielded from the type of reporting Mother Jones, NBC’s To Catch a Predator, and ABC’s Primetime have all won awards for.

Mike Roman email to James O'Keefe and James O'Keefe's reply emails, Subject: "Re: ACORN videos / seiu / election"

On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 1:10 PM, mikeroman.com wrote:

Have time to talk around 8?

...

On Jan 13, 2010, at 3:41 PM, James E. O’Keefe III wrote:

Mike,

Got your info from John Fund.

I was the producer of the ACORN Videos

Would like to know whereabouts of the busses in Boston SEIU, et al are using in order to bus people in to vote in the Tuesday special election.

Thinking about sending some undercover folks up there.

James

...

From: “James E. O’Keefe III”
Date: January 13, 2010 4:16:14 PM EST
To: “mikeroman.com”
Subject: Re: ACORN videos / seiu / election

what time zone are you in. I’m assuming you mean 8Est. That works.

I’m 201-637-0564

NJO: Source: Buzzfeed.

James O'Keefe email to Nadia Naffe, Subject: "Fwd: brainstorm of sorts, here..."

From: “James E. O’Keefe III” Date: January 13, 2010 12:21:54 PM EST To: xxxxxxx@gmail.com, xxxxxx@aol.com Subject: Fwd: brainstorm of sorts, here - far-fetched? Maybe not?…


Your thoughts Nadia?


————— Forwarded message —————From: Heather Higgins Date: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 Subject: Re: brainstorm of sorts, here - far-fetched? Maybe not?… To: Steve Friess , James O’Keefe xxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com, Andrew Breitbart Cc: Foster Friess

Andrew and James, I’m forwarding what could be a very clever idea from Steve Friess in response to the intel below from John Fund re SEIU’s intentions in Tuesday’s election in MA. Don’t know what it would cost, but you all should talk.

Warmest regards -Heather Higgins


On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 12:25 AM, Steve Friess wrote:

Wouldn’t it be great if a “ACORN sting video” could be produced about these busses?

Dad - maybe bounce this off Breitbart?

Some black /Latina conservatives could be wired for video, and get picked up on one of these busses, and show what goes on. My guess -they are offering cash, (which I am pretty sure is illegal), and I also would wager that at least some of these busses are making more than one stop with the same people - ie getting them to vote twice -though I don’t know the mechanics of that.

Perhaps some private detective types would be needed to help track down the busses, and a block or two ahead of them to drop our cameramen off…

Too much to dream? Imagine pulling this off - legal / image problems for SEIU would be a good thing… think there’s upside to this?

Brietbart would know, and Fund would know - ‘if we catch them doing X, it could mean Y’ - I just don’t know what the stakes are…


On Jan 12, 2010, at 12:46 PM, Heather Higgins wrote:

Foster —See below from John Fund re SEIU -Acorn is in MA as well. It would be hugely helpful if you would assist with our non-glamorous but highly effective GOTV effort. If you could possibly let me know today, that would be helpful to our planning. This is such a great opportunity for making trouble in the best sort of way - I hope you can help us really capitalize on it.

Many thanks, Heather


———— Original Message ————Subject: FW: John Batchelor From: “Fund, John” Date: Tue, January 12, 2010 8:25 am To: ‘Michael Thielen’

Tip from Boston source (normally reliable)

Seiu contracting for buses on election day and heading to roxbury, mattapan, roslindale and jamaica plain. If you’re black or brown they’ll rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out.


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

NJO: Source: Buzzfeed.

Heather Higgins email to Foster Friess, Re: SEIU / ACORN

On Jan 12, 2010, at 12:46 PM, Heather Higgins wrote:

Foster —See below from John Fund re SEIU -Acorn is in MA as well. It would be hugely helpful if you would assist with our non-glamorous but highly effective GOTV effort. If you could possibly let me know today, that would be helpful to our planning. This is such a great opportunity for making trouble in the best sort of way - I hope you can help us really capitalize on it.

Many thanks, Heather

NJO: Source: Buzzfeed.

Foster Friess and John Fund are or have been members of the Council for National Policy, a secretive and elite meetup organization of social conservative activists.

John Fund email to Michael Thielen, Subject: "FW: John Batchelor"

Subject: FW: John Batchelor
From: “Fund, John” Date: Tue, January 12, 2010 8:25 am To: ‘Michael Thielen’

Tip from Boston source (normally reliable)

Seiu contracting for buses on election day and heading to roxbury, mattapan, roslindale and jamaica plain. If you’re black or brown they’ll rope you in and take you to the polls, registration can be worked out.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

NJO: Source: Buzzfeed.