James O’Keefe filmed Acorn staffers in Baltimore advising him and a confederate on how to house teen prostitutes. The sting eventually prompted a restructuring of the organization.
When he isn’t on TV or drinking with rich guys, Andrew Breitbart spends most days combing through the thousands of tips he receives via email, instant message, and Twitter. He passes on the choicest of those to the editors of his three group blogs: Big Hollywood, which focuses on liberals’ hold on pop culture; Big Journalism, which calls out the press for lefty bias; and Big Government, which — take a guess. He also runs Breitbart.com, which essentially broadcasts headlines from wire services. His fifth site, Breitbart.tv, hosts political videos.
It would be a lot to keep track of for someone with laserlike focus; Breitbart is more of a disco ball. “I have ADD, OK? Like I’m 17 crack-addled monkeys on spring break. It’s very difficult to organize my day,” he says. It’s true. After scheduling to meet in LA for this story, he instead kept a conflicting appointment in Washington. But he couldn’t meet me there, either; he was headed to New York. And when I finally cornered him in Manhattan, he couldn’t remember the address of the building where his family keeps a studio apartment or where he had put the keys.
But a great tip can always capture his attention. Today, for example, he’s working in that apartment, reading about the finances of Media Matters, the press watchdog that has devoted hundreds of posts in the past four months to bashing Breitbart. He stares at his laptop screen. “Oh, this is good. This is good,” he mutters. “They raised $10 million this year. I’m working out of a basement, and I’m kicking their fucking asses.”
He’s also waiting for the man behind the Acorn videos, a conservative activist and guerrilla documentarian named James O’Keefe, who records himself and his cohorts performing outlandish, politically charged stunts. He once offered Planned Parenthood money to abort African American babies. (The organization said it would accept the donation.)
Last year, O’Keefe, posing as a college student and aspiring politician, went with a scantily clad confederate to the offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in several cities. Incredibly, staffers at the federally funded organization were ready to help him house 13 teenage prostitutes from El Salvador. The first step: “Stop saying ‘prostitution,’” one Baltimore Acorn worker tells O’Keefe’s associate. “If anyone asks you, your business is a ‘performing artist.’”
O’Keefe’s previous antics had failed to garner much attention, so he flew across country to show his footage to Breitbart, a guy known in conservative circles for his ability to incite media mayhem. Breitbart delivered. He was starting Big Government and needed attention for the new site. He deployed an army of 200 bloggers to write post after post about Acorn, giving the story momentum that once would have required a swarm of media outlets to achieve. Fox News ran several segments on the first day alone.
Breitbart initially released only the video from Acorn’s Baltimore bureau, which the group dismissed as an isolated incident. The next day, he posted a video of O’Keefe getting similar results in Washington, DC. Oops. Acorn stepped on the rake again, claiming the videos were doctored. Then Breitbart posted more — from New York City, San Diego, and Philadelphia. Congress started pulling Acorn’s funding, and The New York Times flagellated itself for its “slow reflexes” in covering the story.
The traffic on Breitbart’s sites exploded, and he knew he had found a star. Breitbart signed up O’Keefe to … well, to something. At one point, Breitbart said he and O’Keefe had a “first-look deal,” similar to what a Hollywood producer might give a hot screenwriter. On another occasion, Breitbart talked about his purchase of O’Keefe’s “life rights.”
O’Keefe finally lopes into the Manhattan apartment, wearing a black newsboy cap and leather jacket. Only the stubble on his chin keeps him looking 25 instead of a skinny 14. He is as serious as Breitbart is goofy, as focused as Breitbart is scattered. All O’Keefe will say about his relationship with Breitbart is “He doesn’t tell me what to shoot.” Then he asks me to turn off my tape recorder, powers up his laptop, and talks us through his latest sting. I keep taking notes.
This time, there are no prostitutes involved, just a shady, and serious, tax-fraud scheme. The ploy involves the Obama administration’s 10 percent tax credit to first-time home buyers. The law says that the credit maxes out at $8,000 for an $80,000 home. But at the Detroit office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the rule seems open to interpretation. O’Keefe asks a staffer, What if I bought a place for $50,000, but the seller and I agreed to write down $80,000 as the purchase price?
“Flip it any way you want,” the staffer replies.
What if the place is worth much less — like only $6,000?
“Yup, you can do that.”
O’Keefe and fellow activist Joe Basel ran the same sting at HUD’s Chicago office and at several federally supported independent housing groups. Breitbart paces the parquet floor. The video is damning but not exactly Acorn-explosive.
Then O’Keefe stops the playback. “Oh yeah, I forgot,” he says. “We went to the Detroit Free Press, to the managing editor. We told her the whole thing. She said she wasn’t interested. Wanna see the tape?”
Breitbart starts to cackle. Of course he wants to see the tape. Sleazy HUD administrators are important, sure. But media covering up sleaze? That’s entertainment. “Dude, that’s the most important part!” he says. “I have seepage coming out of five parts of my body right now.”
O’Keefe hits Play. A world-weary Freep editor listens to O’Keefe’s kickback story and politely declines. There could be a thousand reasons why, but to O’Keefe and Breitbart, there’s only one explanation: liberal bias. Breitbart slaps the walls like they were congo drums, grinning. “OK,” he tells O’Keefe, “now I officially adore you.”