James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released an undercover sting video on Thursday night that appears to show campaign staffers for Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke “illegally using campaign resources to buy supplies and help transport Honduran aliens,” according to Project Veritas.
The video, which comes just a few days before the midterm elections, poses potential legal problems for the O’Rourke campaign. A Project Veritas Action attorney who reviewed the footage released the following statement:
The material Project Veritas Action Fund captured shows campaign workers covering up the true nature of spending of campaign funds and intentionally misreporting them. This violates the FEC’s rules against personal use and misreporting. It also violates Section 1001, making a false statement to the federal government. The FEC violations impose civil penalties, including fines of up to $10,000 or 200 percent of the funds involved. Violations of Section 1001 are criminal and include imprisonment of up to five years.
In one alleged exchange, Dominic Chacon and AnaPaula Themann, who both work on O’Rourke’s campaign, discussed how the campaign appears to lie about how it uses its resources to help the migrants:
Chacon: “The Hondurans, yeah… I’m going to go get some food right now, like just some stuff to drop off…”
Themann: “How did they get through?”
Chacon: “Well I think they accepted them as like asylum-seekers… So, I’m going to get some groceries and some blankets…”
Themann: “Don’t ever repeat this and stuff but like if we just say that we’re buying food for a campaign event, like the Halloween events…”
Chacon: “That’s not a horrible idea, but I didn’t hear anything. Umm, we can wait until tomorrow for that.”
Themann: “Well that’s exactly the food we need. And I will just mark it as, I do have dozens of block walkers.”
…
Themann: “There’s actually stores that just mark it as ‘food’ they don’t mark different types… at Albertsons, on the receipts, it marks it just based off of brand…”
Chacon: “I think we can use that with those [campaign pre-paid] cards to buy some food, all that s**t can be totally masked like, oh we just wanted a healthy breakfast!”
Other highlights from the video noted by Project Veritas:
- “I just hope nobody that’s the wrong person finds out about this.”
- “It’s f***ing happening.” O’Rourke Campaign Staff Uses Pre-Paid Cards for Honduran Alien Supplies
- “Don’t ever repeat this…” Campaign Staffers Explain How to Hide Campaign Expenditures for Aliens
- “If you get caught in some sort of violation that’s like a $50,000 fine,” “For me I can just ignore the rules and I’m like f**k it.”
- Transporting Aliens to “airports… bus stations,” “None of this is like sh*t there is a rulebook for”
- Staffer Says She Sent Confirming Texts to Director
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