‘Rather than addressing the serious falsehoods exposed … Senator McCaskill has accused her opponent Josh Hawley of compromising his ethics…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) For three months, incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, has been in a statistical dead heat with her challenger, the state’s 38-year-old attorney general, Josh Hawley.
A recent set of video exposés by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas may finally break the logjam—but not in the way McCaskill had hoped.
With the two candidates scheduled to debate Thursday night, the heated accusations over the videos are sure to raise many questions.
The undercover videos, released earlier this week, feature McCaskill and several campaign staffers speaking candidly to what they consider a ‘friendly audience’ about the ways the two-term senator misleads moderate voters over her liberal policies.
Among the topics raised are McCaskill’s extremist gun-control positions, her opposition to a border wall, support for Trump impeachment, and secretive partnerships with unions and left-wing advocacy groups like Planned Parenthood.
McCaskill responded on Wednesday with outrage, calling on Hawley, in his capacity as state attorney general, to appoint a special prosecutor to launch an investigation under Missouri’s Merchandising Practices Act.
“It is startling that Josh Hawley would embrace fraudulently embedding somebody in my campaign,” she wrote in a statement. “He is the Attorney General of Missouri. He’s supposed to be going after fraud, not applauding it. I have been very upfront about all my positions.”
Although Hawley linked to the videos in a fundraising appeal following the release, O’Keefe denied the accusation of having coordinated his efforts with the GOP campaign.
“Rather than addressing the serious falsehoods exposed by Project Veritas Action, Senator McCaskill has accused her opponent Josh Hawley of compromising his ethics by engaging with our organization,” O’Keefe said.
Hawley also pushed back in a series of tweets, criticizing McCaskill for attempting to politicize the legal process and questioning whether she had any evidence to substantiate the accusations of a crime for using her own words against her.
Let’s review last 24 hrs. 1) @clairecmc & staff caught on tape telling the truth 2) McCaskill accuses ME of fraud 3) McCaskill demands Missouri give her special prosecutor to investigate her truth telling #MOsen
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 17, 2018
While the state’s Merchandising act regulates deceptive practices in trade and commerce, Project Veritas identifies itself as a nonprofit on its website, and O’Keefe classifies his undercover operatives as journalists.
Neither O’Keefe nor McCaskill would elaborate on who the journalists were or how they may have infiltrated the campaign, but McCaskill campaign manager David Kirby downplayed the revelations in the videos, saying the staffers interviewed in the sting were “some 25-year-olds who didn’t know what they’re talking about.”
Kirby acknowledged that the campaign had received three donations totaling $5,000 from Planned Parenthood, but said it had done so openly. The abortion group gave McCaskill $10,000 in her last re-election campaign.
O’Keefe’s previous videos have been known to cause a stir—and to have an impact. He came to prominence for exposing the activist group ACORN in 2009, catching a worker on hidden camera advising a couple (O’Keefe and accomplice Hannah Giles) who pretended to be involved in a child smuggling/trafficking/prostitution ring. The organization subsequently lost its government funding and disbanded.
A recent series of video stings exposed socialist activists embedded in the federal “deep state” bureaucracy, resulting in the investigations and firing of officials at several government agencies.
O’Keefe also has faced lawsuits before, including a $100,000 settlement with the ACORN operative he duped. He is currently involved in a $1 million lawsuit with the leftist group Democracy Partners, as well as a suit with the American Federation of Teachers. Some have stated that they hope to use the legal discovery process in order to expose the inner workings of Project Veritas.
O’Keefe, however, maintains that the attacks against him are yet another attempt to thwart transparency and obstruct the truth from being told. In a statement about the Democracy Partners suit, he said, “It was just good reporting, and they’re suing us.”