NYT Retracts Own Headline, Sources Used In Project Veritas Hit Piece

Project Veritas asked for a retraction from The New York Times after it ran a
hit piece on the front page, above-the-fold of its March 9 edition that spun a tale of
spies and political intrigue that failed to mention how PV uncovered how the
Michigan organization of the American Federation of Teachers handled a
teacher-student molestation complaint.

“I am proud to announce that the holy grail of print media The New York Times,
the Old Gray Lady, All The News That’s Fit To Print, the paper of record has
had to issue a correction to their Sunday Edition front page failed hit piece
on Project Veritas,” said James O’Keefe, the founding CEO of Project Veritas.

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“It doesn’t get much better than this, folks. The absurdities and ironies wrapped
up in this New York Times article and retraction, will shock and amaze you,”
O’Keefe said.

Project Veritas requested NYT correct the age of our undercover journalist from 23 to
25, which they retracted in a Project Veritas record of 28 minutes.

“In the same correction, NYT also retracted their own sources,” O’Keefe said. “In
their front page Sunday Times reporters wrote that they were quoting:
“internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process
of a court battle between the group and the union – has not previously been
reported”

Then, NYT retracts its own sourcing and headline: “A headline with the article
misstated the origin of information…the information came from source
interviews, not documents in a lawsuit.”

There is only one way the NYT got a copy of our emails and that’s if AFT gave them to
The New York Times, something the paper of record went out of its way to
obscure in its own self-retraction.

O’Keefe said it was staggering to him that the NYT would be so sloppy in an article
written by two Pulitzer Prize winning reporters—and so derelict as to fail to
mention the misconduct Project Veritas exposed.

“Why didn’t The New York Times mention that the only reason the Michigan AFT
is suing Project Veritas is to punish us for practicing journalism” O’Keefe
asked.

In his sworn deposition, David Hecker, the president of Michigan AFT since 2001,
said his goal in launching the lawsuit against PV was to “have the lawsuit in
any way possible stop Project Veritas from doing the kind of work that it
does.”

The main narrative of the article by Timesmen Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman said
that the White House and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos directed the Project
Veritas investigation into the Michigan organization of the American Federation
of Teachers—what the Times missed was that in the PV investigation into
Michigan AFT, Johnny Mickles, a field representative of the union, told our
undercover journalist about a Lake City, Michigan high school student’s
accusation of sexual molestation when she was 8-years-old.

According to a report by the Lake City, Michigan public schools based on student’s
account:

[The teacher] entered the bedroom during the night. While in the bedroom [the teacher] uncovered the student and lifted nightgown, grabbed the student’s underwear and attempted to pull the underwear down.

Mickles said Hecker himself worked with a union attorney and negotiated with the
superintendent for the teacher to agree to leave his job with a $50,000
settlement and with his Michigan teaching license intact.

This is a blockbuster report that the AFT went to federal court twice to suppress.
When that effort failed, the AFT filed a lawsuit to drain our resources and
punish Project Veritas for exposing this severe case of institutional betrayal.

The final twist The Times threw in was another retraction in the text of the
article. In its Oct. 21, 2016 article by Steve Eder and Jonathan Martin, headlined: Videos Put Democrats on Defensive About Dirty Tricks, about Project Veritas videos showing Democratic operatives, Scott Foval and Robert Creamer, discussing their plans to foment
chaos at rallies for candidate Donald Trump.

Mr. Foval and Robert Creamer, another operative working for the Democratic National Committee, were the unwitting stars of undercover videos released this week in which they and others were captured discussing unseemly tactics like instigating violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies and arranging for fraudulent voting.

The Times also referred to Trump’s use of the Project Veritas videos in the Oct.
14, 2016 presidential debate in his rebuke of former first lady Hillary Clinton.

Still, the videos were an embarrassment for Mrs. Clinton at a moment when she is trying to frame Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election as nothing more than the fevered dreams of a conspiracy theorist. During Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump referred to the videos, which
together have been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, as proof of
unfair play.

Nearly four years later, Mazzetti and Goldman wrote:

The group has also become intertwined with the political activities of Mr. Trump and his family. The Trump Foundation gave $20,000 to Project Veritas in 2015, the year that Mr. Trump began his bid for the presidency. The next year, during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump claimed without substantiation that videos released by Mr.
O’Keefe showed that Mrs. Clinton and President Barack Obama had paid people to
incite violence at rallies for Mr. Trump.

What Trump said is:

I believe it was her campaign that did it. Just like if you look at what came out today on the clips where I was wondering what happened with my rally in Chicago and other rallies where we had such violence? She's the one and Obama that caused the violence. They hired people-- they paid them $1,500, and they're on tape saying be violent, cause fights,
do bad things.

Clearly, the then-GOP presidential nominee was talking in short-hand that Clinton and
President Barack Obama brought in operatives Foval and Creamer and those men
paid the protesters.

Instead of making that clarification, Mazzetti and Goldman treat it like he made it out
of whole cloth—and in effect retracting the work of their colleagues Eder and
Martin.

Mainstream media reporters and editors take liberties with Project Veritas and James
O’Keefe they would never take with other organizations or news-making
individuals, but true to her legacy, The Old Gray Lady does it bigger and
better.

Rest assured. Project Veritas does not settle lawsuits and we do not lose lawsuits.

Now for the tease: Be on the lookout for our next release—an undercover
investigation into a giant social media platform.