“How did you get in heya?” asked the oldest one in a New Jersey accent as thick as the sludge on the Passaic River. “Can I help you?”
“Yes,” I smiled warmly. “I’m Bill Stern and I’m here with New Star to present the Stay Ahead award. I had an appointment with Juanita Alvarez.”
“Well,” she grunted, “you’ll have to show an ID and sign in.”
Damn! “Bill Stern” did not have one. Fake IDs can get an undercover reporter into more trouble than no ID. Without skipping a beat, I started improvising about the traffic and asking her advice. The curmudgeon warmed up. No two people in New Jersey get from point A to point B the same way, and they are happy to tell you their way is the better way.
“Here, just initial this form and show me your ID,” she said, softening up just a little and pushing the open binder toward me. As she turned around and went to grab something, I scanned the room looking for an alibi.
“My supervisor was wondering if we can still do this today. Would you mind checking if the vice principal is here?”
She made a quick call.
“She’ll be right with you.”
I had my glasses on my head, looking comfortable, pen in hand, touching the white paper looking like I was about to sign the sheet.
“Where is your restroom?” I asked.
“Right over theya,” she responded. I went into the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and placed a call to my producer and asked him if he had heard from Luke. He had not. I went back to the office to wait. After another minute of stalling, in walked Juanita Alvarez.
“Bill! How are you?” she said, reaching out to shake my hand. “Robert’s other class ended but we still have time for you to do the presentation. In fact, it’s better because the entire middle school gym classes are assembled in the auditorium.”
She looked down at my pen touching the sign in sheet. “Don’t worry about that, here just take one of these.”
Thank you, Lord! Alvarez gave me a green visitor badge for my jacket and rushed me down the hallway and into the auditorium. I scanned the room. What a hoot! They had actually set up a speaker and microphone in the front of the room. At least a hundred kids sat Indian-style on the floor facing the mic, and there was the star of our video, wandering around looking confused in a godawful pair of checkered shorts and a hoodie. He had to be wondering what the hell he had done to deserve an award.
“Would you like to use the microphone?” Alvarez asked.
Sure. Why not? The principal was standing behind me. I pulled the iPad from my official bag, switched it on and handed it to him. I wish I could tell you that I was a natural, that I could pull off a scam like this without breaking a sweat, but I’m not, and I can’t. I had to will myself through it—heart rate jacked, hand steady. I was sure the police were going to come into that gymnasium at any minute and arrest me in front of these kids.
In the video, I look halfway calm. In the gym, I was halfway catatonic. Steadying my nerves, I glanced over at Klein and walked in front of the mic. I launched right into it, shouting over the microphone, “My name is Bill Stern,” I stuttered, my pulse pounding. “We’re with New Star Learning, and we’re here today to congratulate excellence in teaching, both in physical education and health awareness. And we’re here today to congratulate one of your teachers for his excellence in helping you.”
“Wooh!” A kid or two whooped, and the rest cheered, enthusiastic and unsuspecting. This plan was working. We never meant to sting the kids, but hell, the Klein award would give them something to laugh about at class reunions fifty years down the road. I was easing into my emcee role, as I usually do about thirty seconds after getting on any stage, whether in character or not.
“We are very, very familiar with Mr. Klein and his wonderful work,” I continued, now laying it on for posterity. “And one of the things we focus on is drug prevention, drug awareness education.” At this point, I started getting comfortable enough to ham it up.
“So today, I’m here to present the New Star Learning Stay Ahead Award 2015 excellence in drug abuse awareness . . . to . . . Mr. Robert Klein from Howell Township Middle School. Everybody give a round of applause.”
The kids had beaten me to it. The whole auditorium filled with cheers. Now, the trick was to get Klein to say something absurdly ironic on camera and to get myself out of there without blowing my cover.
“Mr. Klein, congratulations and thank you for setting a great example for the students,” I said to Klein as I handed him the award and shook his hand. “From all of us at New Star Education, thank you for being here.” In my nervousness, I changed the name of our company from New Star Learning to New Star Education. No one noticed.
“Thank you,” Klein muttered, looking more than a little sheepish. I knew he thought this entire thing was bullshit, but he had to pretend it wasn’t. Holding the award, he rambled for a minute about the various programs the school ran “to keep you drug free.” He then closed with a better line than we could have scripted, “Give yourself a natural high instead of doing drugs.”
Oh, the irony! gotcha! content is king! Even in that moment, I paused five seconds to celebrate internally.
After some anxious small talk, I walked down the hallway as fast as I could and made my way to the parking lot. Driving down the county road and beyond city limits, I could resist the urge no longer. I called back to the office. “We got it! We got it!” I shouted, my heart now beating crazily out of pride in my team and joy in our accomplishment. This sting itself wasn’t going to change the world. Hell, it would not even change much in Howell Township. But we were pioneering, spiking deeper down into that educational iceberg on which reform inevitably wrecks. We were forcing the issue of whether the union would discipline Klein for his outrageous behavior, and if not, we were asking what line would a union rep like Klein have to cross? Veritas magic was challenging the status quo, and no one we stung ever deserved the challenge more than Robert Klein.
Aftermath
On June 15, 2015, our finished video went online. Man, did Robert Klein have some explaining to do. In addition to helpful conservative blogs, the UK’s Daily Mail was up and running with a big photo spread laying out the whole story.15 This included coverage of the final part of our finished video in which a union rep advises Laura on how to handle her “friend’s” drug problem, specifically by not telling the school about it. The rep was clearly more concerned about the user keeping his job than about the students being corrupted.
On June 16, the New Jersey media weighed in, none in more detail than the Asbury Park Press, the largest paper in central New Jersey. By this time, as reported, Klein had been placed on administrative leave with pay, and he was making good money, $99,620 a year. As is customary in the mainstream media, the reporters distanced themselves with a quick refresher on media criticisms of our work. Other than the adjectives used to describe us, the story was extensive and more or less factual.16
By the following day, June 17, the Press had decided that our offenses against good order were at least as troubling as Klein’s. The headline laid the story out: “Howell Cops Investigating Teacher, Hidden Camera ‘Stunt.’ ”17 The key word, here, is “stunt.” From the ACORN sting on, the media have been dismissing our undercover reporting as stunts. They do journalism. We do stunts. Yes, we do “stunts,” but we do stunts to sell our journalism. The print people still have not caught on.
According to Klein’s attorney, his client was simply “the unfortunate victim of a provocateur who uses heavily edited videos to distort the truth for website clicks.” As the attorney saw it, Klein was just the latest such victim given that Project Veritas has a “history of this outrageous conduct.” In fact, the video was only lightly edited for the sake of time. Nothing was taken out of context. The Klein the viewer saw was the Klein that Laura met.
Finally—and the article ends
with his comments—the NJEA’s Steve Baker reminded Press readers of my “past legal troubles,” including the arrest in New Orleans six years earlier. “James O’Keefe is not an honest or reliable source. He’s a political smear artist and he’s well-known for his use of deceptively edited video,” said Baker. “I think the reporting should be on who he is, on his story.” With the Asbury Park Press at least, Baker got his way. The stenographers at the Press chose not to challenge his casual slander. I can’t blame them. It would make little sense for the Press to burn the NJEA, a group with more political clout than any other in suburban New Jersey.
This is why video is so crucial. There was no denying what everyone saw. The authorities can tell themselves that Project Veritas was the problem, and the media can confirm the same, but the real problem was the veritas, the cinema verité, the truth of who Robert Klein is. “If we hadn’t released that video,” I said in my one brief statement to the Press, “Mr. Klein would be standing in front of students right now. Is that what the Howell Township police really prefer?”
It was certainly not what the people of Howell Township preferred. On the Facebook page, “Howell Happenings,” they let loose.18 Only a few questioned Veritas’s tactics. The great majority, most of them female, ignored the media spin and saw the problem exactly for what it was.
“Paid suspension, thank you NJEA.”
“PAID???”
“He should never be allowed in or near a school again. Get rid of paid suspension. He’s getting paid to sit on the beach. He’s disgusting!!!”
“Seriously?! Paid suspension . . .”
“Any one else in any other job would have been fired immediately, this ass clown gets paid suspension . . . SMFH.”
“Paid suspension. . . . Well at least he could buy more coke. . . . These unions are becoming jokes. . . .”
“Paid for what? He should be fired, exposed for being a fraud and punished for being detrimental to children.”
“I think the bigger story is 99600 for a middle school gym teacher. . . .”
The story died a quick death. The police could find no reason to charge us. The school refused to talk about Klein’s stature, citing privacy issues, and the media had little interest in pursuing a story that made their educator allies look bad. Some months later, Klein quietly resigned and scurried down the memory hole. And that was that.
The reader may be wondering, what’s the point of these investigations if the misbehavior continues? To that, I will say two things. For one, school districts nationwide, under union pressure, have so often allowed problem teachers to walk away with their résumés intact that the practice has gotten a name: “pass the trash.” It is one thing to read about a problem teacher. It is another thing to see one—or more—in practice. For another, you will see in the pages that follow how we applied the same techniques to a slightly larger target: the Hillary Clinton campaign. It never hurts to practice.
Meeting Candidate Trump
It’s Corey with Mr. Trump. Any chance we can talk soon?
I received this text on June 4, 2015. This was eleven days before we released the Klein video and twelve days before Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the presidency. I had no idea who Corey was, but I was game for something Trump. As I mentioned, I had met Trump before. He was a fascinating guy. He told me he was a fan of the ACORN investigation and some of the work we did on college campuses. I sensed from the beginning a potential synergy in our relationship. I had no idea, at that moment, that Trump was going to run for president of the United States.
Absolutely. When works for you?
By the time Corey Lewandowski and I got together, Trump had declared his candidacy. So had Hillary Clinton, and the nature of the game had changed. Now I was less interested in Trump as ally or even donor than I was in the attention he could bring to bear on our video work. What I was hoping, in particular, was that Trump would publicly comment on an exchange we serendipitously recorded at Hillary’s campaign launch on June 13.
Always opportunistic, Project Veritas journalist Laura Loomer was standing in line at a Hillary souvenir stand when she struck up a conversation with the women in front of her. As always, Laura’s camera was rolling. “I’m Canadian,” the woman said when she reached the booth and tried to buy something. Manning the booth were Molly Barker, the Clinton campaign’s director of marketing, and Erin Tibe, the campaign’s compliance manager. Tibe is a lawyer. At first, Barker and Tibe declined the Canadian’s money because the purchase would amount to a donation, and candidates could only accept donations from US citizens or permanent residents. The Canadian then said of her new friend, “Can I give her the money?” Laura, of course, agreed, and Barker approved the end-around. “So Canadians can’t buy [merchandise] but Americans can buy it for them?” asked Laura. “Not technically,” said Barker. “You would just be making the donation.”1
“Not technically” translates to “not legally.” This was not a low-level staffer making an error. This was the campaign’s marketing director approving an illegal donation in front of the campaign’s chief compliance officer. The donation was small, but the violation was telling. Heading up to the fifth-floor campaign headquarters in Trump Tower, my communications director, Stephen Gordon, and I hoped to persuade then campaign manager Lewandowski to get Trump behind the video.
On entering the headquarters, however, I quickly lowered my expectations. For all of the attention paid to the Trump campaign in the previous few weeks, there wasn’t much campaign to pay attention to. The interior walls and flooring were totally unfinished. The “headquarters” smelled strongly of cement and drywall dust, not at all what you would expect just a few floors down from Trump’s personal office.
Just three people were wandering around in the cavernous office space. Lewandowski was one of them. A former state trooper from Massachusetts, he swore like a rap star and buzzed around like a madman. While I tried to speak to him, he was juggling two phones and brushing off network callers as if they were telemarketers or Jehovah’s Witnesses. “It’s CNN,” he said when one call came in. He shut it down. “I’m not going to fucking answer them.”
Still, for all the shallowness of the operation, Lewandowski remained confident. He pointed to a pile of “Make America Great Again” hats and told me, “We can’t keep up with the demand. People love ’em.” One thing that struck me even then was the message scrawled on the whiteboard in his office, “Let Trump be Trump.” Someone had already figured something out.
Floating in and out of the space was an eye-catching, twentysomething brunette from Greenwich, Connecticut, with the Hollywood name Hope Hicks. When I learned that she used to model for Ralph Lauren I was not a bit surprised. At the time, she was serving as the campaign’s press secretary/communications director.
“Hey, Hope, this is the wild man that crossed the Rio Grande as Osama bin Laden,” said Lewandowski, cracking open another Monster energy drink and texting CNN producers at the same time.
“Oh, cool,” she said, entirely unimpressed.
The third member of the triumvirate just started the day I arrived. A tall, good-looking guy right out of school, he sat at a plastic desk in the middle of an empty space waiting, I presumed, for his first assignment. If Lewandowski was optimistic, young Johnny McEntee was positively ebullient. “Trump is going to be president, dude,” McEntee told me, “and I am going with him.”
“You pretty confident?” I asked. I know. Success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan, and at this point Trump’s unlikely rise has become a cliché. But remember that immediately after Trump announced, all but a handful of human beings thought the candidacy was a joke. In that large unfinished room, with the two-by-fours still exposed and the campaign more imagined than real, there were a few chiefs but only one Indian, and this was his very first day. What was striking about the unsophisticated McEntee was that he knew
, deep in his heart, with certainty that Trump was going to win. I could see it on his face.
“One hundred percent will be president,” he answered. When McEntee spoke, he sounded like a coach giving a locker room pep talk. He had probably heard a lot of those. He played quarterback at the University of Connecticut and produced an astonishing trick shot video that has been watched more than 7 million times. McEntee had a good nose for the future. As of this writing, he serves as Trump’s official “body man” in the White House, a cross between body guard and valet.
I played the Canadian donation video for Lewandowski on my laptop. “Wow,” he said. “Let’s go see Mr. Trump.” When I arrived at Trump’s office, he was on the phone to Scotland, discussing one of his two golf courses there. (In my quick research on these courses, I discovered that every article I could find after Trump announced for the presidency was negative. No surprise there.) I am something of a multitasker myself, but the idea of running a worldwide business empire while running for president of the United States seemed just a bit daunting.
Once again, The Donald carved out what seemed to me to be an exorbitant amount of time given all that was going on around him. I remember thinking to myself, Who I am to get an hour with Donald Trump? My hope was that he would go public with the video. Lewandowski’s original hope was that I would do some oppo research on Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. I had already nixed that idea, but Lewandowski was gracious enough to retreat to the far side of the room and let me and Stephen pitch his candidate face-to-face.
Trump placed my laptop on a pile of the papers, magazines, invoices, and miscellaneous clutter on his desk and watched the video. He never removed his suit jacket while sitting at his now-famous desk. And contrary to the way he is perceived in public, he listened a lot more than he spoke. And when he did speak, it was mostly to ask another sharp question in a rather earthy and humble style.
“What do you think, Corey?” he asked.
American Pravda Page 9
