James O’Keefe, the creator of Project Veritas, was rumored to have been removed from his position by the organization’s board of directors over petty and juvenile issues. On Monday, O’Keefe confirmed in a leaked video that he had in fact been fired.

The group had attempted to get ahead of the narrative by announcing that O’Keefe had resigned, which angered the public to the point that many had stopped following Project Veritas and swore them off, only caring about O’Keefe’s future movements.

Many began unfollowing the group on Monday night in protest at the board’s decisions.

Real time @Project_Veritas unfollowers… Join us in unfollowing. pic.twitter.com/KabGDWTL2x

— ImAKCFan (@ImAKCFan) February 21, 2023

Monday, Cassandra MacDonald reported for The Gateway Pundit on the circumstances behind the mass defection from Project Veritas:

The Project Veritas Board of Directors has issued a statement following the dismissal of founder James O’Keefe and the loss of over 100,000 Twitter followers. In the hours following the announcement that O’Keefe had been fired from the organization, Project Veritas lost more than 130,000 followers.

The MacDonald report continued:

Early reports suggested that O’Keefe had resigned, but in a statement to the staff, he clarified that he had been fired by the board.

“Today, James O’Keefe decided to remove his belongings from Project Veritas headquarters,” the board said in the statement. “The Board and Management made numerous attempts in the last 14 days to have a conversation with James, but he ignored our outreach and decided to instead leak private information to others, either by doing so himself or by proxy.”

The board claimed that “although PV Leadership has not concluded looking into the full scale of financial issues over the years, a preliminary review at this time indicates that James has spent an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries. More is still being uncovered during the ongoing review at this time. Contrary to many reports from today, James was suspended indefinitely pending the resolution of a fulsome investigation and clarity which will need to be provided by a third party investigative audit report.”

The board noted a number of financial problems, including the expense associated with hiring black automobiles.

“James also left us no choice but to suspend him in the last few weeks when he unilaterally fired the CFO, who can only be fired with Board approval,” the statement continued. “That is a violation of our non-profit’s bylaws. James went as far as to say that a Board member had approved this firing to others, but it was later discovered that it was not the case. That member did not approve the firing. The Board approved James’ suspension so it would have time to properly investigate these internal infractions.”

“James claims that the Board did not allow him to send an apology letter to the staff, which is not true. The Board never told James he was not to speak with staff members, nor that he could not apologize to them,” the statement continued. “But, more than anything, the Board cares about the donors of this organization, who decide to donate their hard-earned money to us because they believe in the mission. We could not allow for our donors to send us money and have it be misappropriated in such a way. We love our supporters, and we would never sit idly by as money is being used for matters that are not mission related.”

More on this story via The Republic Brief:

The board asserted that “even with all of this public fallout, the Board still wants to speak with James. We did not fire him, nor do we want him to resign. We would like to continue conversations with James to resolve internal matters rather than litigate them publicly.” CONTINUE READING…