James O’Keefe, Of All People, Won’t Let Trump Skate on Epstein
Plus: Candace Owens's speculations about the Kirk assassination grow farther fetched.
James O’Keefe’s Epstein O’Beefe
RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST AND UNDERCOVER VIDEO AUTEUR James O’Keefe struck again last week when he released a video that purports to offer yet more proof that the Trump Justice Department is covering up the Jeffrey Epstein case.
In the video, a man O’Keefe describes as a “senior Justice Department investigator” named Glenn Prager—apparently caught on camera by an O’Keefe associate on a plane, and then at a restaurant after the flight—says that Trump is refusing to release Epstein files because he’s “protecting a lot of other people.”
The Justice Department shot back after the video’s release, sarcastically dismissing O’Keefe’s “BOMBSHELL” and saying Prager hadn’t worked for them in fifteen years, and that he’d no real knowledge of the Epstein case during his short tenure back then anyway.
“Exploiting survivors of sexual abuse by fabricating stories for personal gain is reprehensible,” a statement posted on X read. “Enough with the clickbait.”
The Prager video marks at least the fourth undercover video O’Keefe has released showing people with some DOJ connection claiming Epstein is being covered up since the Justice Department tried to close the Epstein case in a July memo. It’s a strange position for O’Keefe, who now finds his videos being embraced by congressional Democrats and cited as proof of Trump administration malfeasance.
Why is O’Keefe—a former Trump stalwart whose nonprofit even received $10,000 from Trump’s foundation a decade ago—going after Trump’s administration? For his part, O’Keefe insisted to me that this isn’t about attacking Trump or the Justice Department at all.
“I’m just playing video of other people’s mouths moving,” O’Keefe said.
The latest video wasn’t all bad for Trump. Whatever Prager’s real knowledge of the Epstein case is, he claimed that Trump wasn’t connected to any Epstein rapes, and claims former President Bill Clinton was far more implicated in Epstein’s crimes.
Still, it’s not the first time O’Keefe has trumpeted supposed proof that there’s a coverup at Justice. It’s been a predominant concern of his since the summer. On stage at a TPUSA event in July, he professed incredulity over a DOJ memo claiming no third parties had been implicated during the Epstein investigation before saying, “It is time to take matters into our own hands.” He announced a new project focused on FBI leaks and played an audio clip of an FBI agent describing the Epstein case as a “shitshow.” The same day, he released a video in which the agent also said law enforcement had “turned a blind eye” or “missed things” related to Epstein’s crimes.
Then came a series of further videos filmed in O’Keefe’s signature style. On September 4, O’Keefe put out footage of a Justice Department official claiming that Republican names would be redacted out of any future Epstein files release. (The official explained, in a screenshotted statement posted to the Justice Department’s official X account, that he had been targeted by an undercover operative posing as a Georgetown au pair named Skylar).
On September 8, O’Keefe released a recording of an FBI “paralegal specialist” saying the Epstein files were being withheld to “cover” for powerful people who might be implicated by them. And the Prager video came out on September 24.
What’s driving this? One former O’Keefe associate speculated to me that O’Keefe—a theater kid who was accused of lavishly spending money from his Project Veritas nonprofit on his musical performances—just really loves attention and knows that Epstein is a hot topic.
I have my own theory. O’Keefe, who’s trying to rebuild his operations after departing Project Veritas two years ago, has invested heavily in the Epstein investigation, running footage from Epstein’s island over the summer. If he followed the presidential line and ditched Epstein coverage on the grounds that it’s a “hoax,” O’Keefe would be abandoning a key storyline for his new operation.
Again, O’Keefe insists he isn’t trying to criticize Trump.
“It’s not an anti-Trump thing, I don’t know where you’re getting that from,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe seems uncomfortable on this new terrain. As Epstein victims held a press conference on Capitol Hill in September to demand the release of more files, O’Keefe tried to engage Democratic protesters in the kind of conversations that could produce a viral argument, only to find out that they were more or less on his side when it came to Epstein.
In another video, O’Keefe showed himself trying and failing to catch popcorn in his mouth as he chuckled about MSNBC clips celebrating his undercover footage.
“I’m not going after the Trump administration!” he lamented at one point.
As many people grasping for a piece of Charlie Kirk’s legacy have done, O’Keefe closes his latest video with something Kirk said to him: In their last exchange, O’Keefe says, Kirk advised him to keep following the story. (The undercover footage of Prager was filmed two days before Kirk’s assassination.)
“I told Charlie I was conflicted about what to do,” O’Keefe said in the video. “And Charlie Kirk’s last words to me were: ‘James, you should be a journalist first.’”
Candace Owens hits road bumps on Kirk-Mossad assassination claims
POPULAR RIGHT-WING YOUTUBER Candace Owens shook up the right just days after her friend Charlie Kirk’s assassination when she claimed he had been on the verge of a break with Israel.
Owens’s implication was that Kirk could have been murdered for opposing Israel. And while Owens is not a person many are inclined to take at her word—she is perhaps best known these days for claiming that Brigitte Macron, the French first lady, is part of a transgender criminal cabal—fellow right-wing commentators Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly confirmed that Kirk was growing restless with a feeling that he couldn’t criticize Israel.
Owens hinged much of her claims on a letter Kirk sent in May to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While Netanyahu himself quoted from the then-private letter after Kirk’s death to demonstrate the slain activist’s devotion to Israel, Owens argued that Netanyahu was cherry-picking sentences from the letter to cover up Kirk’s true feelings.
“You’re severely misrepresenting the contents,” Owens said in September, demanding that Netanyahu release the full letter.
Well, the New York Post published the seven-page letter on Monday—and it reveals that, if anything, Charlie Kirk was even more of an Israel superfan than we realized.
Kirk’s main grievance in the letter to Netanyahu is that Israel is bungling its “information warfare” efforts in the United States, leading to a growing tide of young conservatives opposed to Israel. Rather than criticizing Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza itself, Kirk begged Netanyahu to just get better at portraying that war to Americans.
Kirk proposed a series of interviews with average Israeli citizens that could be distributed in the United States, with the remarkable working title, “Dude, You Got Us Wrong!” He urged Netanyahu to harness the “same ingenuity” Israel showed with its exploding-pager strategy against Hezbollah, and apply it to social media. Kirk also reached back to the colonial era for some vintage racism, referring to Islam as “Muhammadism.”
Does this sound like a guy who was about to turn against Israel and go full groyper? While the letter’s emergence would seem to totally undermine Owens’s claims, she was undeterred on Monday, arguing on her show that Kirk appeared to be living in The Truman Show—surrounded by people he couldn’t trust. In his final days, Owens claimed this time, Kirk was really about to renounce Israel, and he wanted to do an event with her to cement his ideological shift.
Owens challenged Turning Point USA to refute a series of claims about Kirk, including the claim that in early September he had announced to a small group of associates that he had “no choice” but to break with Israel. She concluded the list with this claim: “Then did he, just 48 hours later, conveniently catch a bullet to the throat before our onstage reunion could happen?”
“I don’t know how the executives at Turning Point USA sleep at night,” she said.
The letter saga is the latest evidence that Owens’s allegations about Kirk’s death, while initially taken at least somewhat seriously on the right after the assassination, are losing steam. She’s proposed that Kirk may have been shot from a network of secret underground tunnels and wondered whether some sort of bee-related organization was behind it.
To take another example: casting around for more figures to flesh out her hazy conspiracy theories, Owens has fixated on Phil Lyman, a Utah Republican politician who was a bystander to the assassination and has been active on social media in its aftermath.
On one episode of her show, Owens noted that a house near the university is owned by a man named Lyman Branch. Does that make the homeowner related to the politician Phil Lyman? Owens said she wasn’t sure, but she thought it was worth considering.
Famously, though, that’s not how first names work. A shared surname can be a sign that people are related, but that same rule doesn’t apply to first names. (Hopefully you didn’t hear that here first, folks.) Phil Lyman relished that point in a response video, saying that Owens’s theory would mean actor Owen Wilson is in her family.
“I’m just guessing that you’re probably related to Owen Wilson,” Lyman said. “Candace Owens . . . Owen Wilson?”
Owens’s other big saga, her lawsuit battle with the French first family over her transgender crime claim, is also getting complicated.
After the Macrons filed an updated version of their complaint against Owens late last month—and amid reporting that Brigitte Macron will offer “scientific” evidence that she’s a cis woman—Owens fired back.
Owens’s husband, George Farmer, a British-born businessman and the former chairman of Turning Point UK, wrote a letter to the Justice Department on Monday asking for an investigation into whether American publicists and investigators working for the Macrons on the lawsuit are violating the law by failing to register as foreign agents.
“Those working to influence the American public on behalf of Mr. Macron and his partner, Brigitte Macron, are not above the law,” Farmer wrote in the letter.
As for Netanyahu, perhaps he took Kirk’s advice after all. According to a new foreign-agent registration, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale registered as a foreign agent for Israel, working on a $6 million contract that includes a “nationwide campaign” to fight antisemitism.
Did you see Ted Cruz -let's stop attacking pedophiles. WOW
Not bad enough he and his Senate Judiciary Committee permits SCOTUS to take bribes from Leonard Leo and the committee refuses to vote on requiring Leo to provide his records - and then they refuse to require ethics from SCOTUS.
And then our Congress takes forever to get rid of the scum like Gaetz and Santos.
Cruz and the GOP obviously feel they are above all laws - and they will get paychecks during the shutdown. These are special people - without ethics - and no concern for their oath or constituents. And religion - just a joke
"On one episode of her show, Owens noted that a house near the university is owned by a man named Lyman Branch. Does that make the homeowner related to the politician Phil Lyman? Owens said she wasn’t sure, but she thought it was worth considering." - LOL, really makes you think!