Project Veritas, the right-wing media group known primarily for its undercover video stings, suspended all operations on Wednesday after months of unsuccessful cost-cutting measures, according to Mediaite.
In a letter to the organization’s few remaining staffers, human resources director Jennifer Kiyak said that it was necessary to put operations on pause in “the interest of preserving the possible future existence of Project Veritas.” She also announced another round of layoffs in the note, calling the move a “Reduction in Force,” Mediate reported.
Sources told the outlet that half a dozen staffers were laid off this week alone, including all its remaining journalists. Just 11 people remain on payroll, one former staffer told Mediate.
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The development was first reported earlier on Wednesday by Bobby Harr, a former investigative reporter for Project Veritas. He tweeted that Kiyak and CEO Hannah Giles had cited “financial ruin as reason for [the] additional layoffs.”
Harr told Mediate on Wednesday that he’d been part of the most recent cull, having been officially laid off via phone call earlier that afternoon. The conversation had “confused” him, he said, since he thought he’d been terminated the previous month. He was provided no severance pay, he said.
“I was confused by this as my job was actually cut during the first round of layoffs while I was on medical leave,” he said. “I was locked out of my work phone and laptop as of that day and my paychecks stopped.”
Christian Hartsock, another staffer who was axed from Project Veritas in August, told Mediate that he was surprised the nonprofit was even still running. “I have no idea what ‘operations’ there are to suspend,” he quipped.
Harr blamed unsound leadership for Project Veritas’ shuttering. “Lack of funding and poor management amplified the damage that James O’Keefe already did to the organization prior to the days of Hannah Giles, who then delivered the final blow,” he said.
“The organization used to thrive and prosper. It’s truly sad to see what can happen to great opportunities with a surplus of resources when the wrong people are in power.”
O’Keefe, Project Veritas’ founder and onetime chief executive, departed under a cloud in February—pushed out by the nonprofit’s board amid clashes with other executives and complaints by staffers about his leadership style.
His exit came less than two weeks after the board was sent a memo signed by 16 employees. Calling O’Keefe a “power-drunk tyrant,” the memo described instances of alleged workplace misconduct and accused him of squandering funds on personal expenses, including his musical theater habit.
In May, the board filed a lawsuit against O’Keefe, who’d spent the intervening months essentially publicly running his mouth about his ouster. The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges he broke a nondisparagement clause, and accuses him of bullying employees and misusing company funds.
“Being known as the founder of an organization does not entitle that person to run amok and put his own interests ahead of that organization,” the complaint states.
O’Keefe’s troubles compounded in August, when the Westchester County district attorney’s office confirmed it was “looking into” him. Though details of the probe have not been made public, its timing suggested a link to the potential financial malfeasance that led to his messy departure from Project Veritas.
All the while, Project Veritas was struggling to stay afloat in its post-O’Keefe era. The nonprofit gutted its workforce in August, laying off 25 employees in a single week. “I’m not going to fight in the press over complaints from laid off staffers,” Giles told The Daily Beast at the time. “I’m going to keep doing the work to rebuild this organization from the mess it was left in.”
In audio of an internal meeting held just a few days later and obtained by Mediaite, Giles can be heard telling a board member and a handful of staffers, “It’s devastating… We’re bankrupt.”
Jeffrey Lichtman, O’Keefe’s lawyer, told Mediaite in a statement on Wednesday, “It appears that in the few months since Project Veritas ousted James, it continued to spend money at the same rate, blowing through the many millions of dollars James had previously raised for it—despite PV having no new sources of fundraising.”
“This is highly suspect,” he continued, “and we would welcome a full audit of PV’s finances to learn where that money was actually spent.”
