Project Veritas and prosecutors: A fascist love story

Project Veritas, the Koch-funded pseudo-documentary company of the eye-roll inducingest James O’Keefe, has stuck more than its foot in it this time. This time, the ironically-named group, which has tried to sell fake stories and create false narratives in the past, is up to its neck in muck of its own making.

A judge dismissed charges against a slew of #DisruptJ20 demonstrators arrested for protesting the Donald Trump inauguration, largely due to a cache of videos recorded by Project Veritas and turned over to prosecutors. Those videos were not, however, turned over to the defense counsel of the #J20 protesters. The failure to do so is a trampling of their Due Process rights called a “Brady violation.”

Not only did prosecutors withhold the videos, in some cases, according to ThinkProgress, they edited the footage without disclosing that fact.

Let’s pause here. Prosecutors edited evidence against defendants in a criminal trial and did not disclose that they edited the evidence.

What a staggering, staggering slithery mess of constitutional desecration. Our Constitution grants us the right to protest; it’s enshrined in our very first amendment. Criminally prosecuting speech is, on its own, problematic.