Right-wing activist James O’Keefe and his secretive Project Veritas group have faced plenty of legal headaches in the past year, including FBI raids, a lawsuit defeat, and two associates pleading guilty in federal court.
Now O’Keefe and Project Veritas have a new problem: a disgruntled, trash-talking former employee and porn performer who has dubbed himself “Jean Jacque the Cock.”
The ex-employee, whose real name is Patrice Thibodeau, has taken to YouTube to reveal what he describes as the organization’s secrets, including the names of O’Keefe’s alleged undercover “sting” operatives and the kinds of hidden cameras he says the group uses.
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Making matters worse, Thibodeau seems to relish his role as O’Keefe’s tormentor.
“James is fucking done, bitch,” Thibodeau, a former Project Veritas videographer who left the organization in 2020, said in one of the videos. “I’m laughing my ass off, this is so pathetic.”
Project Veritas has scrambled to stop Thibodeau from disseminating its supposed secrets. On Nov. 7, the group asked the New York Supreme Court for an injunction to prevent Thibodeau from publishing confidential information about his former employer, a filing first reported by the New York Post.
Project Veritas didn’t respond to a request for comment. Thibodeau also declined to comment.
After leaving Project Veritas, Thibodeau is now attempting to launch a social media, comedy, and adult performance career in Florida. Some media outlets have described Thibodeau as a “porn star” in articles about the Project Veritas lawsuit. But the extent of his adult work appears to be a handful of homemade videos of Thibodeau masturbating alone that he then uploaded to various amateur websites.
Thibodeau’s videos about Project Veritas have disappeared from YouTube, and the lawsuit redacted the details of his on-tape revelations. In one video obtained by The Daily Beast, however, Thibodeau revealed the names of people he said worked undercover for Project Veritas, as well as what he described as the group’s methods for running its sting operations on liberal groups.
For example, Thibodeau claims to have been in Washington’s historic Georgetown neighborhood while attractive female Project Veritas operatives attempted to secretly record dates with federal bureaucrats, a plan previously reported by The New York Times.
Thibodeau warned his audience that Project Veritas staffers could still be looking for targets on Washington’s dating sites.
“If you are a person going on a dating app in D.C., you might potentially be on a date with a Project Veritas journalist,” Thibodeau said.
Thibodeau also alleged in the video that Project Veritas uses hidden cameras that like buttons or coffee cups, supplied by a surveillance manufacturer called LawMate. In its lawsuit against Thibodeau, Project Veritas accused him of violating confidentiality clauses in his employment contract regarding “covert devices.”
In the footage, recorded in August, Thibodeau mocks O’Keefe’s group for failing to land any major bombshell videos in 2022. Thibodeau described what he claimed was O’Keefe’s process for running the stings and feeding the right-wing media content “machine.”
“The machine requires him to get ‘UCJs’—undercover journalists—to be recruited and work for him, and go on Tinder,” Thibodeau said.
Thibodeau also claimed that the undercover operatives are trained to issue what Project Veritas calls “elicitations” to their targets, asking questions about Joe Biden, for example, to prompt the unsuspecting people to make damaging statements.
In the video, Thibodeau reveals the full names of multiple women he claims have worked undercover for Project Veritas on the stings. The identities of Project Veritas employees could be useful for liberal groups, which have already shared intelligence on O’Keefe’s associates in attempts to avoid future undercover stings.
The Daily Beast was not able to independently confirm Thibodeau’s descriptions of the Project Veritas employees. But the organization itself appeared to acknowledge that at least some of the names revealed by Thibodeau are genuine, describing the names in his video as “highly confidential trade secrets” in its lawsuit.
Thibodeau made his videos in August in the aftermath of a lawsuit filed against Project Veritas by another former employee named Antoinetta Zappier. That complaint painted Project Veritas as a raucous, drug-fueled, sexually charged workplace.
Among other things, Zappier alleged that a person overdosed on drugs during a party at the group’s corporate apartment, that a Project Veritas fundraiser impregnated a “subordinate” and paid for her abortion, and that a wild boat party hosted by O’Keefe culminated in an attendee defecating on the floor. Zappier has also claimed that O’Keefe opened pornography on his office computer multiple times.
Project Veritas has denied Zappier’s allegations.
In his video responding to Zappier’s lawsuit, Thibodeau read an article from The Daily Beast describing the case against O’Keefe and supported Zappier’s descriptions of Project Veritas as a hard-partying workplace. Thibodeau also enthused about O’Keefe’s predicament, saying “Antoinetta has him by the nuts.”
Thibodeau appeared to grind axes against other former Project Veritas employees in his attacks on the group. Thibodeau, who has refashioned himself as a stand-up comedian reminiscent of a morning-zoo shock jock, made crude, misogynistic comments about female Project Veritas employees and their physical attributes in at least one of the videos.
The vendetta from his ex-employee marks just the latest legal problem for O’Keefe, whose home was raided by the FBI last year as part of an investigation into the theft of presidential daughter Ashley Biden’s diary.
In August, two people who admitted to stealing the diary pleaded guilty as part of the federal investigation. Project Veritas has insisted its reporting methods are all legal.
Thibodeau has faced some other legal issues of his own. In Nov. 2021, he was arrested after allegedly cracking the windshield of a Mercedes-Benz with a rock and resisting arrest after police caught him. That misdemeanor case remains open in Florida, with a warrant issued for his arrest after he failed to appear in court earlier this year.
