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Guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe of Project Veritas on Thursday announced he’s filing state and federal ethics complaints against the federal prosecutors who lined up against him when he tried to catch staffers for Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., disrespecting members of the tea party.
In the 2010 episode, O’Keefe and a team tried to film conversations with the senator’s staff about those who objected to Landrieu’s support for Obamacare and were calling the senator’s office.
Some of O’Keefe’s team donned costumes of telephone repair crews and they went to the senator’s office asking about the telephone system. O’Keefe eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of entry by false pretenses for the incident and was given “an unusual and unprecedented three years of probation,” according to his attorney.
At a news conference Thursday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, his organization released a new video along with copies of Ethical Conduct Complaints filed with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board against former Assistant U.S. Attorney Sal Perricone, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann and former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten.
Also filed was a Department of Justice Ethics Complaint against Karla Dobinski, the deputy chief of the Criminal Section at the Civil Rights Division.
O’Keefe’s prosecutors all have been forced to resign and surrender their federal bar credentials, but they are still able to practice law in state courts.
“Their boss, Jim Letten, was forced to resign but is now a dean at Tulane. Most egregious, Karla Dobinski has had no real disciplinary actions taken against her. She is currently working in the same DOJ component involved in recent major Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City issues,” Project Veritas said.
O’Keefe said it’s in the public’s best interest that none of prosecutors practice in either state or federal court again.
O’Keefe and his colleagues were arrested Jan. 25, 2010, by the FBI. Authorities charged him with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.
But even the government’s own documents didn’t support the charges.
The federal government said further investigation “did not uncover evidence that the defendants intended to commit any felony after the entry by false pretenses despite their initial statements to the staff … requesting access to the central phone system.”
“Instead, the government’s evidence would show that the defendants misrepresented themselves and their purpose for gaining access to the central phone system to orchestrate a conversation about phone calls to the senator’s staff and capture the conversation on video, not to actually tamper with the phone system, or to commit any other felony.”
O’Keefe said that five years later he refused to remain silent.
“It is time to set the record straight, which is why I want people to know what happened in Louisiana. In light of new revelations, all of these people need to be brought to justice,” he said.
“Senator Landrieu needs to address the questions raised in the complaints we have filed and the prosecutors involved in my case need to answer for their possibly criminal, or at least unethical actions. If the senator and her friends in powerful positions can do what they did to me, they can do it to any Louisianan,” said O’Keefe.
In the video, O’Keefe’s attorney, Michael Madigan, called the government’s response an “enormous overreaction.”
O’Keefe said his goal had been to catch Landrieu’s staff members poking fun at or joking about tea-party members opposing Obamacare, for which Landrieu had just voted.
He pointed out that his personal email even was released to the public by the government, a move Madigan called “unprofessional and inappropriate if not criminal.”
Then, recently, O’Keefe said, he discovered that one of the prosecutors had been posting negative comments about his case online while the case was going on.
In a statement released along with the video Thursday, Project Veritas explained that last year “five New Orleans police officers who had been convicted of a deadly shooting had their convictions overturned.”
“A scandal was uncovered at the time where at least three U.S. attorneys, Sal Perricone, Jan Mann and Karla Dobinski, had posted comments about the case online, all from Letten’s office. These comments included prejudicial comments condemning the cops during the trial.”
Project Veritas said that on further investigation, it “uncovered several blog posts with the screenname ‘LegacyUSA,’ who is identified as Sal Perricone in court documents.”
“‘LegacyUSA’ wrote comments about O’Keefe’s case, including one [shortly after] his arrest stating, ‘Sure they should be punished. Throw the book at them.'”
The organization recently exposed the potential for voter fraud in Colorado leading up to the 2014 midterms. The group also documented potential voting irregularities in a number of North Carolina campaigns, as well as irregularities in the Mark Pryor campaign in Arkansas and the Alison Grimes campaign in Kentucky.
The results were multiple investigations and job resignations.
Earlier, O’Keefe’s videos revealed skullduggery by the now-defunct ACORN community action group that resulted in Congress defunding it.
Earlier, O’Keefe sued a group called Main Justice for its comments about the Louisiana case.
WND also reported when Letten and O’Keefe met on the school grounds where Letten works.
Letten unleashed a foul-mouthed tirade.
“You are a nasty, little, cowardly spud,” shouted Letten. “All of you, you’re hobbits. You are less than I can ever tell you. You are scum. Do you understand?”
Letten further blasted O’Keefe as a “snail,” an “a–hole,” an “extremist nut job” and a “horse’s a–.”
Video of the confrontation, as edited and released by O’Keefe, can be seen below.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following contains several instances of strong and obscene language.
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