James O’Keefe, the founder and chairman of Project Veritas, was put on paid leave from his non-profit journalism enterprise on Wednesday amid what some are calling an attempted “hostile takeover” being executed by certain board members.
The Project Veritas Board of Directors will reportedly decide whether to remove him from his leadership position in a meeting scheduled for Friday. …
Reportedly, Project Veritas is divided between “a group of employees who are perceived to be loyal to O’Keefe, including his communications adviser, R.C. Maxwell, and the board, which has been dissatisfied with what it perceives as O’Keefe’s mismanagement.”
A letter dated February 6 was circulated at Veritas featuring eleven pages of testimonies from anonymous employees criticizing O’Keefe, with one staffer allegedly calling him a “power-drunk tyrant.”
[I’m mystified. O’Keefe has really been PV for its entire run, and it would be really difficult to maintain the brand without him — and especially in competition against him. The board has to know that, which means that *maybe* the issues with personnel are so substantial that they have to shoot themselves in the foot — or that this is just a personality clash that forces everyone to act against their own rational interests. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow what happens, but either way the organization is going to get damaged. A friend likened it to Apple pushing out Steve Jobs, but can PV even survive without its visionary founder? — Ed]
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