Conservative activist James O’Keefe has attempted to trick CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau into a video where she’d be surrounded by sex toys, porn, and other “incriminating” stuff on a boat. He failed. O’Keefe is most infamous for the ACORN 2009 undercover video controversy. In the CNN case, Boudreau was tipped off on the way to the boat by Izzy Santa, exec director of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas.
“I have a problem on my hands that I think has the potential for unnecessary backlash,” Santa wrote (to a financial donor to Project Veritas). “Today, James is meeting with a CNN correspondent today on his boat. She is doing a piece on the movement of young conservative filmmakers.
“She doesn’t know she is getting on a boat but rather James’ office. James has staged the boat to be a palace of pleasure with all sorts of props, wants to have a bizarre sexual conversation with her. He wants to gag CNN.”
She wrote that “the idea is incredibly bad” and “the more I think about it we should not be doing this.”
O’Keefe had also instructed Santa to print a “pleasure palace graphic” on a large poster, according to an e-mail.
CNN later obtained a copy of a 13-page document titled “CNN Caper,” which appears to describe O’Keefe’s detailed plans for that day.
“The plans appeared so outlandish and so juvenile in tone, I questioned whether it was part of a second attempted punk,” Boudreau said.
But in a phone conversation, Santa confirmed the document was authentic. Listed under “equipment needed,” is “hidden cams on the boat,” and a “tripod and overt recorder near the bed, an obvious sex tape machine.”
Among the props listed were a “condom jar, dildos, posters and paintings of naked women, fuzzy handcuffs” and a blindfold.
“Fake pimp from ACORN videos tries to ‘punk’ CNN correspondent“