Over the weekend, BigJournalism.com posted video of and commentary on the confrontation between Daryle Jenkins of One People’s Project and Andrew Breitbart.  Beyond ambushing Mr. Breitbart at this weekend’s CPAC, Mr. Jenkins has written a number of articles riddled with false facts regarding me and my role in what he called a “racist forum” at Georgetown Law Center.  BigJournalism.com has offered me the opportunity to go on record to refute various assertions made by Mr. Jenkins.  As has been acknowledged previously at Big Journalism, Mr. Jenkins is far from a mainstream blogger, but so long as he continues to misrepresent facts that are then used as source material for authors who are published on mainstream sources like Max Blumenthal at Salon.com, he ought to be exposed as well.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Daryle Jenkins dubbed a “racist forum”

David Almasi, who is the national director for Project21, which is under the National Center for Public Policy Research, contacted me via voicemail about the Leadership Institute’s desire to have a black panelist speak on a forum they were sponsoring on “Race and Conservatism.” Because I was working nights at the time, Marcus Epstein and I played phone tag for about two weeks before I was finally able to contact him. Marcus extended the institute’s invite to me personally and told me the forum’s rules–these included a 15-minute speech by each of the speakers and Q&A for those in the crowd.

I committed myself to the event and began my in-depth research into the writings of Jared Taylor, as I do with any opposition I debate.  This flies in the face of Jenkins, who repeatedly prints I was a “last-minute addition.”  I had weeks to research Mr. Taylor’s writings and ideas.

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Max Blumenthal is attempting to stand behind his story.

His article at Salon.com remains unchanged even though the Village Voice and Dave Weigel at The Washington Independent have written detailed corrections contradicting Blumenthal’s post.

At his personal website he recounts a discussion he had with “Isis,” a photographer who, according to Blumenthal “does tend to be a little apprehensive about speaking to folks.”  It seems that at this point, “Isis” is the last remaining eyewitness that Blumenthal says supports his assertions made on Wednesday at Salon.com.

As a reminder, here are the assertions that Salon.com made that “Isis” is supposed to corroborate  (there are many, many more false allegations at Salon.com, and Blumenthal has not made any attempt to retract or explain them, but these are the assertions that are related to the mysterious “Isis”): (more…)

Chuck Johnson is at it again. He must be out on a weekend pass. I feel compelled to answer the Little Green Monster after I saw him go after James O’Keefe with that same tired wet noodle of a charge he has leveled at so many, calling him a white nationalist. Johnson claimed in an LGF post that “ACORN sting filmmaker James O’Keefe was photographed attending a 2006 white nationalist conference titled ‘Race and Conservatism.’”

Sounds terrible, right? Sure, until you get the facts that Johnson doesn’t tell you. When it became clear that it wasn’t a “white nationalist conference,” Johnson tried to slither out of responsibility for his words by saying in a new post: “It’s very clear that I attributed the ‘white nationalist conference’ claim to One People’s Project; that’s what the words ‘according to’ mean.”

Busted! As if it weren’t obvious that in his original post, he was approving of and endorsing what One People’s Project said. But this is typical of Johnson’s weaselly hit-and-run smear tactics.

Meanwhile, Larry O’Connor at Big Journalism uncovered the truth about O’Keefe’s supposed participation in this conference: (more…)

Just a couple of hours ago, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs issued an update to his post “James O’Keefe’s Race Problems” of February 3rd,  which had spread the lie that James O’Keefe attended a “white nationalist convention” (Johnson diligently sourced this characterization of the “Race and Conservatism” debate to the website, One People’s Project).  To his credit, Johnson demands in his update that One People’s Project put up an uncropped picutre of O’Keefe “manning a table of racist literature” or shut up:

More importantly, it’s now incumbent on One People’s Project to put up the goods if they have them. They should release an uncropped version of the picture they said shows O’Keefe manning a table of racist literature, or they should retract that claim because they can’t prove it.

But earlier in the post, Mr. Johnson declares that it was incorrect for Dave Weigel to attribute the phrase “white nationalist conference” to him:

True, Mr. Johnson, but these are also your exact words:

While it is true Mr. Johnson did not use the precise phrase “white nationalist convention” as was noted in Weigel’s article, he said something very similar in the comments of his blog. In this case, Mr. Johnson does not attribute his claim that O’Keefe attended a “meeting of white nationalists” to anyone. (more…)

You know you’re having a bad day, Joan Walsh, when it’s just you and Max Blumenthal alone in a foxhole while you’re being overwhelmed by the truth. Because David Weigel, one of your sources for Blumenthal’s story and Max’s own blog posts that James O’Keefe once helped organize a “racist conference,”  has now “clarified” his remarks and guess what?  Your story just fell apart.  Read it and weep:

Clarification — and Mea Culpa — on James O’Keefe and ‘Race and Conservatism’

On Wednesday, I wrote a post reacting to Max Blumenthal’s story “James O’Keefe’s Race Problem” and was too quick with a description of the August 30, 2006 Robert Taft Club event on “race and conservatism.” Specifically, I wrote this:

“A zoomed-in headshot of James O’Keefe (after the jump), then working for the Leadership Institute, survived, although it cropped out the table he was sitting at, covered in controversial literature.”

In a later post, I walked this back: While I’d been at the event, it was Isis, a photographer/investigator for the One People’s Project, who told me that her photo was actually a picture of O’Keefe at a table of controversial literature. But several e-mailers and commenters have pointed out that my first post appeared to endorse Blumenthal’s whole story. I want to quickly walk through that story and point out the parts that, based on my experience at the event and interviews with Isis and event organizer Marcus Epstein, were not true.

There follows five points of material error in Blumenthal’s story and in the original post at the “anti-racist” website, One People’ s Project (whose site is adorned with the old Soviet Union colors of red and gold, and features a Soviet-style logo).   Among the revelations: (more…)

In Max Blumenthal’s article “James O’Keefe’s race problem” for Salon.com of February 3, 2010, Mr. Blumenthal makes a number of unverifiable and provably false claims regarding James O’Keefe’s attendance at a 2006 conference called “Race and Conservatism.”  Below are the list of quotes containing misinformation and an explanation of why they need to be addressed by the editors of your publication.

From left: Marcus Epstein, Jared Taylor, Kevin Martin, and John Derbyshire at what Max Blumenthal dubbed “a white-nationalist confab”

We kindly request corrections to all:

According to One People’s Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O’Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism.

As noted in this post here by Larry O’Connor, we contacted Mr. Jenkins, who identified David Weigel as his source for the claim that Mr. O’Keefe was manning the table.  Mr. Weigel has denied that Mr. O’Keefe manned the table and has no knowledge to suggest Mr. O’Keefe was involved in the orchestration of the event at any level. In an interview with BigJournalism.com, Mr. O’Keefe denied having planned the event.

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David Weigel at the Washington Independent interviewed Marcus Epstein, organizer of the “Race and Conservatism” event that has been labeled as a “Racist Forum.”  He flatly denies allegations that have been made that James O’Keefe worked at the event or had any involvement in the event:

“I’ve made mistakes, which I paid for and addressed,” said Epstein, who has mostly ceased political activity since the 2009 revelation of his arrest in Georgetown. “I don’t want them to be used in false, guilt-by-association smears against others. I met James O’Keefe a number of times. It’s the Beltway — it’s a small circle. It’s the conservative movement. But he did not collaborate with me, definitely not on that event.”

Marcus Epstein

Weigel was also at the event in question, and he confirms that the characterization currently being made that it was a racist rally or forum is misleading and false: (more…)