Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe charged with identity theft, unlawful voting in Minnesota

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced the felony charges at a news conference. She said O’Keefe, 42, of West Palm Beach, Florida, and Higby, 26, of Covington, Washington, wore costumes and used the names of registered state voters while starting the “vouching” process in the Aug. 11 primary.

The vouching process provides a way for voters who lack proof of their current address to register and vote in their new precinct on the same day after a voter already registered in that precinct vouches for them. Poll workers were suspicious and reported the behavior. Moriarty said the men stopped short of signing the required oath, but that giving false names and starting the process was enough to justify the felony charges. “The system for identifying misconduct and responding to it functioned well during the primary,” she said. The process is rarely used; fewer than 0.6% of votes cast in the November 2024 election used it, according to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office website.

In a video and written statement released Wednesday evening, O’Keefe said he and Higby had been acting as investigative journalists and never intended to complete the voucher process. “In our report, we clearly stopped and walked out of the polling places to avoid even touching a voting ballot,” O’Keefe wrote. He said they were careful to say “the name is” rather than “my name is” when giving names to poll workers. His organization, O’Keefe Media Group, said the men presented “an intentionally extreme scenario to expose what they see as the lunacy of the state’s ‘vouching’ system.”

David Becker, a former Justice Department official and executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, said he wasn’t aware of any examples of vouching leading to organized or widespread fraud, but said there have been more efforts recently by those pushing voter fraud claims to commit questionable acts themselves. “Impersonating another voter is a very serious crime,” Becker said.

O’Keefe came to notoriety by publishing undercover sting-style videos. He founded Project Veritas and was later ousted as its leader. Neither O’Keefe nor Higby has had an opportunity to enter a plea. Higby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.