The purpose of Diamond Dog, as one source close to theorganization put it, is literally to get Trump reelected.

Last year, Project Veritassdonor development team solicited big-ticket funders with a pitch deckfrequently tailored toa given patrons pet ideologicalgrievances and personal hang-upsoffering tantalizing details about thegroups undercover operations for the 2020campaign cycle. One iteration of this Apple Keynote file was prepared for anask meeting with a person who appears to be Cognex Corporation founder Robert Shillman, a devoted funder of Islamophobic causes who was alsoone of OKeefeswould-be wedding guests. (Shillman ended up pledging to donate $50,000 to thegroup.) The slate of investigations in the Dr.Bob pitch includedschemes to procure evidence of illegal aliensvoting, mail-inballot tampering at nursinghomes, andthe sale of absenteeballots and voter profiles on the Dark Web.

By the end of summer 2019, Diamond Dog had already grown to be across-country effort, based on internal Project Veritas memos, research notes,and other documents that we have obtained. InCalifornia and Texas, Project Veritas has tasked its operatives withunearthing supposed evidence of widespread mail-in ballot forgery. In bothstates, Project Veritas has worked to infiltrate the groups of volunteers andpaid canvassers who collect absentee and mail-invoter applications from low-income, elderly, and minority groupsa perfectly legalpractice in most states that conservatives have tried to label as nefarious ballot harvesting.

In Texas, Project Veritas has alsocoordinated in secret with a local Republican operative named AaronHarris, codenamed Dragon, currently chief of staffto Republican congressman Lance Gooden. In turn, through the activist group hefounded, Direct Action Texas, Harris has helped Project Veritas covertlystrategize with a staffer working for the office of the states Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxtonis leading the states election integrity initiative, oneof many Republican efforts nationwide to suppress the vote under the guise ofrooting out the nearly non-existent threat of voter fraud.

Granted, Project Veritas, whose fervor to own the libs is matchedonly by its comical incompetence, is hardly likely to tip the election inDonald Trumps favor all byitself. But it is at the vanguard of a larger underhanded approach thatRepublicans, starting at the very top, are taking to the 2020 cycle. If theywant to win, they really have no other choice but to undermine the vote: Trumps poll numbers are in the basement, and heappears constitutionally incapable of making appeals beyond his hardcoresupporters on the right.

Republicans have all but admitted that this is their strategy. Incoordination with the Republican National Committee and a raft of independentconservative groups, Trump has staked the success of his entire reelectioncampaign to a widespread voter suppression effort built on the pretext ofpreserving election integrity. The project, led by his campaigns senior counsel Justin Clark, has worked toplace operatives in at least 10 battleground states to challenge voter rollsand procedures. Between lawsuits and local advertising blitzesallregularly relayed to Trump in the Oval Officethe effort could cost wellover $20 million, as the RNC told The Washington Post.

Project Veritas has been among the on-the-ground organizations atthe forefront of these efforts and has benefited substantially as a result.According to internal Project Veritas documents, the groups fundraising total for 2019 leaped up to morethan $13.44 million, $4.58 million more than their 2018 returns and the groups largest reported annual revenue figure todate. The group may be comically incompetent, but in these cursed times, we allknow how dangerous comical incompetence can be once enough money and cloutline up behind it.

For an operation premised on conspiracy theories and fueled byraging paranoia, it will come as no surprise that the agents helping tospearhead Project Veritass election mischief are oddballs on the fringes ofAmerican political life. In one slide prepared forDr. Bob, a 69-year-old Florida resident, a registered Republican named JosephVancheri notifies OKeefe of his soon-to-bestatus as a poll worker in Broward County, likely for undercover Election Daysnooping on Project Veritassbehalf. Vancheri, an ex-cop and die-hard Trump supporter, has routinely taken to Facebook to lash out against all the Trump haters and SHEEP, includingSHIFTY SCHIFF and the Idiot Warren, using Trumpspreferred epithet Pocohontas [sic]. Afirst-generation immigranthimself, Vancheri has nevertheless long harbored hardline views onimmigration that echo his anxieties over thepotential for illicit enfranchisement of foreigners.

In anotherslide, Project Veritas boasts of receiving a tip from a formerbroadcast meteorologist named ArchKennedy, who found it suspicious that 300 people were all registered to vote atthe address for Emory UniversitysEmory Muslim Student Association in Atlanta. (In all likelihood these voters,who constitute 2 percent of Emorystotal student population and .0028 percent of Georgias population, have their mail forwarded there.) In 2017,Arch organized one of the anti-Muslim group ACT! For Americas28 nationwide March Against Sharia rallies. Held in AtlantasPiedmont Park, it was a sparsely attended affair but still managed to includeRepublican Georgia State Senator Michael Williams, then mounting a doomedprimary campaign for governor.

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Inside the Project Veritas Plan to Steal the Election - The New Republic