The Student Who Helped James O’Keefe Might Face Criminal Charges

by Cassy Fiano | April 10, 2015 1:50 pm

You would think that a university would be glad to know that they have staff members who support ISIS among them. But not at Barry University — the student who helped James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has been kicked off of campus and is now facing criminal charges.

project veritas[1]

Laura Loomer, a senior studying communications, helped O’Keefe’s organization, Project Veritas, capture secret video of staff members at Barry apparently offering advice on how to start a pro-Islamic State organization. Loomer pretended that she wanted to start an organization, dubbed Sympathetic Students in Support of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which would send humanitarian and financial aid to the Islamic State.

At one point in the video, a staffer for Barry suggests altering the group’s name, because “technically, we’re at war with ISIS.” Barry argues it is ludicrous to claim anybody at the school backs Islamic terrorism and says it is the victim of deception and misleading edits to the video.

Loomer has already been suspended and booted off Barry’s campus for her role in creating the video. Now, a staff member at the school says that his appearance in the video violated Florida criminal law governing the recording of conversations.

According to the criminal complaint, the staff member found out that he had been recorded even before the video’s release, and notified Loomer that she could not release any audio or video recorded without his consent. When the video used footage of him anyway, he immediately filed a complaint with the police.

Florida one of a handful of “two-consent” states where recording a conversation requires the consent of everybody being recorded, rather than a single person. The law only applies, however, in situations where individuals have a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as in their homes. Whether such a reasonable expectation exists behind closed doors in a school office is unclear.

Project Veritas insists that the recordings were perfectly legal. And as for the staff member who notified police about the recordings, there would have been a really easy way to ensure that nothing ever came of them — just don’t talk about setting up campus support groups for ISIS! There, wasn’t that easy?

Endnotes:
  1. [Image]: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/project-veritas.jpg

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