Once a headline-creating far-right muckraking operation, Project Veritas has effectively thrown in the towel, announcing that due to budget issues, it was shutting down its New York office, outsourcing content development and making its remaining few employees work from home, the Daily Beast reports.
After the board of directors ousted founder James O’Keefe for mismanagement and self-dealing, the group known for making outrageously deceptive “sting” videos continues to struggle to find donors willing to finance its stunts. It’s dropped its staff from 43 to 18 people, and it’s essentially ceased its performance art productions.
“Project Veritas is in a tough situation,” recently-retained CEO Hannah Giles, best known for deceptively dressing like a streetwalker for one of the group’s early successes in conservative media, said. “It was made tough by O’Keefe leaving, and made doubly challenging by mismanagement before I was hired. I wish we could have kept everyone on and grown the organization but I’ve been put in the situation where I have to cut and refocus so we can get to growth. I’m not going to fight in the press over complaints from laid off staffers, I’m going to keep doing the work to rebuild this organization from the mess it was left in.”