Undercover inside political campaigns?
A conservative group that has gone undercover to record officeholders, journalists, Planned Parenthood and other groups is suing the Ohio Elections Commission over a piece of state election law that bars individuals from surreptitiously joining and undermining a political campaign.
Project Veritas filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. It argues that state law violates its First Amendment rights and should be declared unconstitutional.
The organization wrote in its lawsuit that it intends to use the same tactics to investigate campaigns in Ohio during the 2020 election cycle.
The lawsuit stems from a 2018 Ohio Elections Commission complaint filed against Project Veritas, which took undercover recordings in the Grove City office for the combined campaigns of former Gov. Ted Strickland’s 2016, who was running for senate, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The organization embedded two people in the campaign to take recordings. It published a video in October 2016 about Strickland’s position on “coal and guns.”
The Elections Commission complaint argued that Project Veritas violated the portion of Ohio law that prohibits someone from serving on an election campaign “for the purpose of acting to impede the conduct” or “reporting information to the employee’s employer or the agent’s principal without the knowledge of the candidate or the candidate’s organization.”
The commission dismissed the case, saying the two-year statute of limitations had expired. But Project Veritas is asking the court to determine that the law is unconstitutional as it prepares to use similar tactics to infiltrate Ohio campaigns during the 2020 election cycle.
Among Project Veritas’ targets are presidential and congressional campaigns that are “publicly proclaiming positions that differ from their actual intentions on issues that are important to Ohioans,” including the environment, taxes and immigration, among others.
Project Veritas “will need to alter or eliminate their plans if the Reporting Restriction persists, because the restriction essentially criminalizes Project Veritas’ proven and most effective practices.”
A spokesman for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who represents the elections commission, declined to comment.
The complaint was filed by Lauren Windsor, who is affiliated with the left-wing political consulting firm Democracy Partners. Project Veritas wrote in its lawsuit that it has previously investigated Democracy Partners as well.
The original complaint calls Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe a “notorious right-wing political hitman” and “political mercenary,” but the organization’s lawsuit refers to it as “a nonprofit organization that engages almost exclusively in undercover journalism to report to the public about instances of corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.”
The lawsuit says Project Veritas is not “a political organization” and doesn’t take stances on “controversial political topics,” support or oppose candidates.
O’Keefe has made secret recordings of Planned Parenthood, posing as an adult boyfriend of an underage teenager to allegedly show the organization wouldn’t report the relationship, according to a 2018 Politico profile. Project Veritas has distributed edited recordings of several political candidates, including former Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat.
The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics says journalists should avoid undercover or “other surreptitious methods of gathering information unless traditional, open methods will not yield information vital to the public.”