James O'Keefe Jumps the Shark

I am referring to the evil James O'Keefe, of ACORN infamy, and not my friend who spends a lot of time at the Massachusetts Pirate Party herding cats.

In his latest "sting" he had one of His Evil Minions^™ buy a T-Shirt for a Canadian tourist:

………

The re­port­ers (in­clud­ing me) ap­peared con­fused about how they got to the press con­fer­ence hos­ted at the Na­tion­al Press Club. Present at the press con­fer­ence were five to 10 video cam­er­as, along with a room of 30 or so re­port­ers, all ob­li­vi­ous to the fact that we had been snookered in­to an­oth­er sup­posedly sa­la­cious re­lease from O’Keefe’s or­gan­iz­a­tion.

Clin­ton staffers have already been put on alert for hijinks from O’Keefe’s con­ser­vat­ive group, which gained no­tori­ety around the ACORN scan­dal, and put out a video last week show­ing a Clin­ton cam­paign staffer en­cour­aging a “vo­lun­teer” to ask Iow­ans if they are Clin­ton sup­port­ers be­fore re­gis­ter­ing them to vote.

“We have journ­al­ists across the coun­try in­vest­ig­at­ing in­side the cam­paign. Not just this cam­paign,” O’Keefe said on Tues­day.

On Tues­day, the group teased its second re­lease as “a power­ful new un­der­cov­er video con­firm­ing that cor­rup­tion has per­meated Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign at the highest levels.” The video pur­ports to show Molly Bark­er, the dir­ect­or of mar­ket­ing for Clin­ton’s cam­paign, ac­cept­ing a cam­paign dona­tion from a for­eign na­tion­al. Sounds pretty bad, right?

Then you find out that the “for­eign na­tion­al” is a Ca­na­dian wo­man who was simply try­ing to buy a T-shirt at Clin­ton’s kick­off rally, and that Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion’s own “journ­al­ist” ac­ted as an in­ter­me­di­ary straw buy­er to make the trans­ac­tion, tak­ing the Ca­na­dian wo­man’s money to pur­chase the shirt for her.

In the video, the Ca­na­dian vis­it­or (who, O’Keefe says, Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion did not find the name for) says, “Can I give her the money? She’s Amer­ic­an. Can she buy it for me?”

“She could make a dona­tion,” Bark­er says.

“Can you buy it for me?” the Ca­na­dian wo­man asks the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive.

“Sure, I’ll buy it,” the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive says. “So Ca­na­dians can’t buy them, but Amer­ic­ans can buy it for them?”

………

Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion is com­fort­able con­duct­ing its op­er­a­tions un­der eth­ic­ally du­bi­ous cir­cum­stances. The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Dana Mil­bank got at that in an ex­change dur­ing the press con­fer­ence with the group’s leg­al ex­pert, Ben­jamin Barr.

Mil­bank: “I’m no ex­pert on cam­paign fin­ance law, but was that leg­al for your per­son to take that cash?”

Barr: “It’s a tech­nic­al vi­ol­a­tion of the law. It’s akin to jay­walk­ing for cam­paign fin­ance. This is a low-dol­lar threshold con­tri­bu­tion. There’s no re­port­ing is­sues at play. It’s less than $200. So at most it would be a small civil pen­alty that’s a few hun­dred dol­lars. But what we’re really wor­ried about is the Hil­lary cam­paign that has taken in a wide ar­ray of con­tri­bu­tions. Once you ag­greg­ate bey­ond $2,000, then you’re with­in the crim­in­al sanc­tions.”

Mil­bank: So you vi­ol­ated the law as well?

Barr: Yes.

………

“Is this a joke?” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi asked later in the Q&A. “This feels like a prank.”

“Is this a joke,” O’Keefe re­peated. “Well, the Clin­ton cam­paign doesn’t think it’s a joke, be­cause they’re talk­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post about it. And we sent the let­ter to the Clin­ton cam­paign, so no, this is not a joke.”

Not only does O’Keefe have the gump­tion to of­fer to en­trap a polit­ic­al cam­paign to the tune of $40, his group is now seek­ing re­dress for its own straw pur­chase.

“The Clin­ton cam­paign should re­turn their il­leg­al con­tri­bu­tion. I don’t see oth­er rem­ed­ies. That’s the only rem­edy that we’re seek­ing,” O’Keefe said at the press con­fer­ence.

………

To quote Charles Baudelaire, “The dev­il’s finest trick is to per­suade you that he does not ex­ist.” O’Keefe has the op­pos­ite in­ten­tions. His finest trick is to per­suade you that he does still ex­ist, and is worth listen­ing to.

Even the Washington Post, which has never found a Clinton scandal that it would not eagerly pimp, has determined that there is no "there" there.

A Canadian tourist wanted a t-shirt, and a member of O'Keefe's "Wretched hive of scum and villainy" took pity on her and bought it for her, and somehow it's a big Clinton scandal?

Dude, you have had your 15 minutes of fame.

Get a real job, and stop living in your parents basement.