Democrat bragged about disrupting Trump rallies
UNITED STATES: Conservative activist James O’Keefe has released secretly recorded, selectively edited video footage that includes a Democratic activist bragging about deploying troublemakers at rallies held by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
After O’Keefe began releasing videos this week, two Democratic operatives stopped working on the presidential race and both the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign denounced the tactics described in the footage. Both said the activities described never took place.
O’Keefe’s group, Project Veritas, promised to release additional videos ahead of the November 8 election.
The central character in the recordings is Scott Foval, a Wisconsin-based liberal operative. He is portrayed in the footage as boasting about his connections to the party and the Clinton campaign, and claiming to have arranged for people, including some who are mentally ill, to incite violence at Trump rallies.
``You can message to draw them out, and draw them out to punch you,’’ Foval is shown on a video as saying.
Foval also appears to say hired agitators should have their medical and legal bills covered. As with much of the video’s content, it’s impossible to say with certainty what Foval meant, because the videos are edited in a way so that it’s not clear what led to the comment. In a separate video, Foval muses to an undercover O’Keefe associate about how it would be easier to get away with voter fraud if out-of-state residents drive to the polls in the targeted states in cars rather than being bused in by an organiser.
There’s no evidence presented in the video that anything Foval discusses as a theoretical has ever occurred.
Foval told The Associated Press in an email that O’Keefe’s associates had set him up.
``This scheme to cast legitimate organising activities as a sinister plot is nothing but a ruse,’’ he said.
O’Keefe and Project Veritas have a long track record of targeting Democratic groups, often by hiding their identities and using hidden cameras. A previous O’Keefe sting led to the demise of ACORN, a community organising group that O’Keefe portrayed as engaged in criminal activity via hidden camera videos.
O’Keefe was convicted in 2010 as part of a scheme to illegally make recordings at the office of then-Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat.
In this case, Foval appears to have been several steps removed from the presidential race.
In July, the Democratic National Committee paid about US$26,000 to Mobilize, the consulting firm of Robert Creamer, a longtime liberal activist based in Washington and the husband of Illinois Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Creamer was also featured in the latest O’Keefe videos, although not saying anything that appeared to be unethical or illegal.
-AP