A total gun ban is apparently the true, off-the-record goal of Maryland Deputy Attorney General Thiruvendran Vignarajah in the latest hidden camera video from muckraker James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas crew .
Thiru Vignarajah, 38, a Democrat and Harvard Law School graduate, allegedly made this admission to a female undercover Project Veritas reporter he encountered at a legal conference in New York City and with whom he was apparently smitten. If this footage is accurate, the married state official later met with the woman, age 21, in a bar and in his hotel room after first obtaining her cell phone number to send her an article.
Among other secrets, the high-ranking official also disclosed that his boss, Maryland’s elected attorney general, would join a lawsuit supporting President Obama’s EPA regulations that are being opposed by the AGs in many other states. “But nobody outside of Vignarajah’s office knew for certain that the attorney general would be siding with Obama against the wishes of Gov. Hogan,” The Daily Caller observed .
“The reason I followed up with this guy from the start because I knew it would be important to show and expose that there are people out there like this in our government who are willing to give secrets to young women they want to sleep with,” O’Keefe’s reporter remarks in a second video (see both videos embedded below and draw your own conclusions).
Hogan, a Republican, was the upset winner of the 2014 governor’s election in Maryland over ex- Gov. Martin O’Malley ‘s handpicked successor Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown. O’Malley is currently seeking the presidency in the Democrat election 2016 primary campaign against rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
The Project Veritas footage also depicts Vignarajah revealing that his boss has no plans to run against Hogan in 2018, a factoid then unknown to the public or to the political community.
“Vignarajah, who is married, is seen continually flirting with the woman, posing as a law student. He also admits to her he sometimes doesn’t feel qualified for his job,” WMAL explained .
When asked about his real views about firearms, Vignarajah reportedly expressed strong anti-gun views, even though the right to keep and bear arms is protected under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“My complete answer, off the record, is we should ban guns altogether, period. If you want to go hunt with a gun, you can go to the gun range, you can pick up your gun at the gun range, fire it there, and then you leave it there and you go home. And, if you want a gun at home, you ought to either be a law enforcement officer, or you ought to go through an extensive licensing scheme, like you have to pass like a driver’s license, you have to pay a tax, you have to have insurance.”
He also advocated the implementation of fingerprint trigger locks during the private conversation.
In a follow-up Project Veritas video, the lawyer asks the woman to delete text messages exchanged between the two, some of which were allegedly sexually explicit.
Vignarajah also appears to tell the Project Veritas reporter that he is only staying married “for appearance purposes.”
“Project Veritas legal experts say Vignarajah likely violated Maryland’s Rules of Professional Conduct (Rule 1.6(a)) by leaking information about his client, the state of Maryland, to the journalist,” O’Keefe’s website claims in relation to the EPA lawsuit disclosure.
Although the controversial O’Keefe has plenty of detractors for his particular brand of journalism, his Project Veritas team, which mostly specializes in undercover videos, has done its share of investigative reporting into corrupt or fraudulent government practices, work which seems to be generally falling out of favor in the mainstream or legacy media. News-gathering organizations used to regularly employ techniques such as hidden camera research in their reportage.
A spokesman for Maryland’s attorney general dismissed the controversy, commenting that the AG Brian Frosh generally isn’t “concerned about private views shared by employees in private conversations.”
The spokesman added that “Mr. Vignarajah is a skilled prosecutor and experienced manager. He is not only brilliant, he’s also self-effacing, humble and human,” according to WBAL-TV.
James O’Keefe and Project Veritas recently released a video showing key Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin (the wife of ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner a.k.a. Carlos Danger) slamming Republicans and some Democrats for opposing the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S.
[images via Project Veritas/YouTube]