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James O’Keefe Kicked Out Of TriBeCa Film Festival [Updated]

By Thea Conrad
Published on: 14:28 PST, Apr 23, 2017

Right-wing investigative journalist and filmmaker James O’Keefe was apparently kicked out of the TriBeCa Film Festival as he was about to sit and view a film about himself. He tweeted about the incident right away, and minutes later he posted another tweet saying that he was being heckled by bystanders.

In addition to being verbally attacked outside the venue, O’Keefe also claimed that security personnel were instructed to not allow him inside the event. James did not specify as to how he came upon this information.

ACORN And The Firestorm is the documentary film being shown at TriBeCa of which James O’Keefe is a crucial part of. He tweeted about the production a few hours before claiming to have been prevented from seeing it even though he says he was a legitimate paying customer.

The documentary centers around the 2008 U.S. presidential election. A liberal group by the name of ACORN had an unexpected run-in with O’Keefe and a woman named Hannah Giles, who were pretending to be a hooker and her procurer in order to document the actions of the political committee.

According to the film synopsis, O’Keefe and Giles working undercover to exploit ACORN “spawned the now-omnipresent Breitbart Media, drove an even deeper wedge between Democrats and Republicans, and served as a prescient foreshadowing for much of today’s political climate.”

James is known for his undercover methods of obtaining information. The company he mans, Project Veritas, was successful at exposing corrupt aspects of the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.

Project Veritas was responsible for uncovering some of the more shady operations of the Democratic National Committee, such as recording the head of a DNC-linked group confess to organizing crowds of people to disrupt and incite violence at Trump rallies during the election season. The YouTube video which outlines this bombshell is currently at 6.4 million views.

O’Keefe followed this up with another “October Surprise,” which exposed DNC-inspired voter fraud. The video depicting this has about half the view count of the first one.

After Donald Trump won the election, James focused his attention on the presidential inauguration scheduled for January 20. Project Veritas journalists again went undercover to unveil the more unscrupulous activities of the radical left. This time the investigators posed as people interested in not just disrupting, but shutting down inauguration proceedings. It wasn’t hard to find people who were willing to share their ideas, and the findings of the investigation were shared with Washington D.C. law enforcement, who took the content of the recordings seriously.

It looks like James O’Keefe was busy during his time at TriBeCa on Sunday, as he and his team distributed flyers that allegedly explain away all the demonizing rhetoric of ACORN And The Firestorm.

Given James’ attempts to discredit the film, perhaps that’s one reason why he was asked to leave the viewing. There’s no word yet on if he has been refunded for the ticket he purchased.

[Updated April 24, 2017, 9:51 a.m. EST]

A couple of hours after James O’Keefe posted his first tweet about the incident in which he was ousted from watching a film about himself at the TriBeCa Film Festival, his company Project Veritas tweeted out a group of emails between Reuben Atlas, one of the film’s directors, and Nick Evangelista, one of O’Keefe’s colleagues. The exchange took place between April 17 and April 20.

The Hollywood Reporter published a story saying that Atlas had been surprised to see O’Keefe at TriBeCa, but according to the emails, that should not have been the case.

The article claims that Atlas said James’ part in the documentary ACORN And The Firestorm was minimal because he’d not answered requests for an interview during the making of the film, and Reuben was therefore startled to see the controversial journalist at the viewing.

According to the emails, it’s plain to see that Reuben Atlas was lying when he said that he was surprised James O’Keefe “wanted to be involved” in the world premiere of the film. Evangelista clearly states in the messages that O’Keefe very much wanted to be able to see the movie’s first showing.

THR story also alleges that O’Keefe showed up without a ticket to the venue, contradicting the filmmaker’s initial tweet about the occurrence. It also states that James brought a camera inside and when asked to stop filming, refused. This is supposedly the real reason he was kicked out.

O’Keefe has so far not commented about his attempt to record his experience at TriBeCa, nor has he responded to Atlas’ claims that he didn’t answer to the request to be interviewed during the film’s production and how big of a part he played in the documentary.

[Updated April 25, 2017 9:23 a.m. EST]

Veritas Visuals, one of James O’Keefe’s YouTube channels, posted the following video yesterday. It shows James being denied entry into the theater premiering ACORN And The Firestorm even though he clearly had a ticket. The doorman to the theater did not give a specific reason for why O’Keefe wasn’t allowed in; all he said was that he was following orders. When James tried to get answers for why he was not only denied entry, but asked to leave, he wasn’t very successful.

[Featured Image by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images]

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