James O'Keefe has made a semi-lucrative career for himself cobbling together "undercover" videos of himself and his compatriots attempting to get groups that he deems enemies of the conservative movement to do illegal or unethical things that James O'Keefe and his allies show up to propose they do. The first time his team did this, against ACORN, the fraudulently pieced-together video he created to claim they want along with it brought down the organization—and then cost him a pretty penny when the ACORN employee he filmed sued him for the deception, a case settled by O'Keefe for $100,000. He also landed himself a 2010 criminal conviction for attempting to illegally bug the offices of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu.
The power of that particular propaganda technique has continued to wane, however, as he and like-minded conservative tape-fakers attempt the same schtick only to be met with skepticism by a press and public that gets more and more unimpressed with O'Keefe's antics after each new tape is released, then quickly debunked. Now, via Jane Mayer, they seem to increasingly be running into a new problem: Their would-be victims are catching onto their "stings" before those tapes are released, because it turns out the conservative fake-tape brigades kinda suck at this.
In a six-page letter of complaint sent to the California Department of Justice on Friday, the League of Conservation Voters, or L.C.V., asked the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to open a criminal investigation into the operatives for potential fraud, racketeering, unfair business practices, trespassing, invasion of privacy, and possible violation of the state’s two-way-consent eavesdropping laws. The environmental group filed the letter in California because the “imposters,” as it labelled the operatives, first made contact with the organization through its state branch in the San Francisco Bay Area. A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice declined to comment, as is its policy on potential criminal investigations.
After becoming suspicious of a trio of would-be big-money "donors," the League of Conservation Voters eventually identified the trio as conservative provocateurs Christian Hartsock and Daniel Sandini, who both worked with O'Keefe (oh, and White House adviser Steve Bannon) in the past, and "Pizzagate" promoter Ann Vandersteel. They don't know if the trio was working for O'Keefe or were freelancing this one, but that's now up to California law enforcement to probe. It's illegal in the state to make clandestine recordings of someone without their consent.
The story of how the LCV, a staid group that doesn't seem like it'd have much in the way of pseudo-scandal to offer the likes of Hartsock and Sandini, eventually became suspicious of the trio (all operating under fake names) and sussed out their true identities makes for a good read. The short version? A pattern of "bizarre" behavior ... like being really attached to a certain pair of cufflinks.