The deceptive right-wing organization Project Veritas, headed up by James O’Keefe, is in hot water after its latest “sting” video continues to blow up.
Now, even the alleged (and legal at the tiime) act of “ballot harvesting” in Minnesota is being backtracked, with a subject of the video coming forward claiming the site tried to pay him to lie.
According to a local Fox 9 report, Liban Osman, the man portrayed to have “harvested ballots” for Rep. Ilhan Omar’s campaign, says it was all a set-up by Project Veritas and their Somali community “insider” Omar Jamal.
Osman says that Jamal initially told him that Project Veritas would pay him $10,000 in exchange for being part of the “investigation.” In a phone call with the Daily Dot on Tuesday afternoon, Osman confirmed his previous claims made to Fox 9.
In the video released by the right-wing group, Osman can be seen with ballots in his car. He is also shown saying he paid people for their ballots. Osman says the video was taken from his Snapchat story and the organization “deliberately left the full context on the cutting room floor,” according to Fox 9.
Osman never worked on Rep. Omar’s campaign, but rather his brother’s campaign and maintains he only collected 20 ballots when it was legal, amid the coronavirus pandemic. In the video, without proof, Jamal and Project Veritas say Osman was paying people to vote for Omar.
Osman also told the Daily Dot that Jamal faked a conversation with him that was shown in the Veritas video. Osman claims Project Veritas deleted a segment of the video following him tweeting about the matter. However the Daily Dot was unable to verify that claim.
Project Veritas denied the account made by Osman to Fox 9, and after the story went viral on Twitter, it left O’Keefe visibly irate. He ranted in a nine-minute video, where he characterized Fox 9’s report as “horseshit.”
When reached for comment, Project Veritas spokesperson Neil McCabe initially picked up the phone. When informed it was the Daily Dot on the line, he hung up, claiming their phone system was having technical difficulties.
Project Veritas’ latest video alleging ballot harvesting began to fall apart last week following the Daily Dot reporting on the many holes in Jamal’s story, including that his nonprofit doesn’t exist. GoFundMe also told the Daily Dot that they were “investigating” the Project Veritas fundraising page for Jamal.