James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released undercover video on Wednesday indicating that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is skirting Iowa election law through its voter registration practices.
Time reported the Clinton campaign went on high alert last week after determining at least two women it believed to be from Project Veritas were seeking to expose illegal activity within the organization. A campaign official expressed confidence the campaign has “upheld the law.” Furthermore, regarding voter registration — the focus of the video — the campaign’s “policy is to register all voters, regardless of their preference in candidates,” claimed a spokesperson.
What Project Veritas (PV) discovered, at least in the instructions given by one paid campaign staff member, is that the Clinton campaign’s stated policy is not its practice.
The video opens with an undercover journalist from Project Veritas, who has apparently been posing as a volunteer, being told by an Iowa Hillary Clinton campaign staff member, identified as Sarah Sterner, that she is no longer allowed in any Iowa Hillary offices or events.
“Me?” the “volunteer” (from PV) responds — with a sense of faux disbelief reminiscent of Casablanca’sCaptain Renault: “I am shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in here!”
The video then goes back a day earlier to show staffer Sterner explaining to a PV undercover journalist the campaign’s practice regarding voter registration: first, find out whom the prospect supports.
“If you open up a conversation as like, ‘Hey, are you registered to vote?’ And they’re, like, ‘no,’ and they want to register, you have to register them,” she says.
“And so that’s why I want to keep our primary focus on, ‘Hey, are you a Hillary supporter?’ And then if not, then great move on, you know?” Sterner concludes.
The narrator, O’Keefe, states that Sterner is explaining how workers can “skirt” Iowa’s election law, citing 39A.2 (1)(b)(5), which states that “A person commits the crime of election misconduct in the first degree if the person willfully … deprives, defrauds, or attempts to deprive or defraud the citizens of this state of a fair and impartially conducted election process.”
A Republican field staff member, who wished to remain anonymous, told Time that approach to training volunteers about voter registration is pretty standard practice among the GOP ranks as well.
O’Keefe gained notoriety in 2007 with undercover videos he created with pro-life activist Lila Rose exposing Planned Parenthood practices. In 2009, undercover videos he released about ACORN generated such a public outcry that the organization lost its federal funding.
O’Keefe comes on camera at the end of this video exposing the Hillary Clinton campaign practices, claiming: “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“In fact, stay tuned, Hillary, because we’re shortly going to release a stunning story of election malfeasance at the highest levels of your campaign,” promises O’Keefe. “Check your email.”
BCN editor’s note: This article first appeared at Western Journalism.