Big Government behind take downs of Project Veritas and America's Frontline Doctors founders

Many people suspect that corrupt elitists are behind the attempted ousters of anti-establishment nonprofits founders, like James O'Keefe, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich and Dr. Simone Gold from the very organizations they set up — Project Veritas (PV), the Corona Investigative Committee and America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) respectively, as depicted in this meme.

Fire the star fundraiser?

Board members behind hostile takeovers of nonprofits are thought to have either been adversarial "plants" from the beginning, who deceptively claimed to champion a founder's cause in order to gain their trust, or to have come under pressure from Big Government, Big Business, or both. Such claims are bolstered when board members attempt a putsch just after a founder's greatest accomplishment, a time with the greatest potential for successful fundraising. A few weeks after PV founder O'Keefe's exposé on Big Pharma, the PV board voted him out.

Give it away?

Activists would ideally prefer to maintain control of their organizations as they grow. Why do they cede control by creating a board of directors? The answer is, in order to facilitate fundraising. Almost all donors wish to receive tax deductible receipts for their donations, so they will not have to pay income tax on money that they do not use for themselves. In order to provide such receipts, organizations need to be approved by the IRS as a tax-exempt charitable organization.

Individual income tax deductions for contributions to charitable organizations have been allowed since the Revenue Act of 1917, passed just four years after ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment which allowed the federal government to directly tax citizen's income. Today, however, applicants for tax-exempt (501(c)(3)) status face a politicized struggle in which they must prove that they are governed by a board of directors that meets various criteria, including that members be:

• independent and “not dominated” by employees, relatives or business partners,
• in possession of “required skills and other resources,” 
• knowledgeable and engaged in areas like accounting, finance, compensation, and ethics
• informed and active,  
• representative of a "broad public interest,"
• of sufficient size to "effectively make sure that the organization obeys tax laws, safeguards its charitable assets, and furthers its charitable purposes."

BoardSource comments, “[I]t is difficult to imagine that a board with fewer than five members is able to incorporate all the desired qualities.” A founder who sits on a five person board would be limited to one other member who is a relative, employee or business partner, meaning that the other three members could force them out at any time.

Absent the abolishment of the federal income tax, visionaries will continue to cede control of the organizations they found to facilitate fundraising, despite the inherent risk. In fact, beyond the tax benefit provided by 501(c)(3) status, the mere status itself offers, “a veneer of legitimacy to an organization by signaling to some potential donors that the federal government has approved of its activities.”

How it should work

An issue brief prepared by AFLDS details the State and common law protections enacted to ensure that board members do not harm the activities of founders and staff members of nonprofit organizations. 

Duties of care, loyalty, and obedience to their organizations generally require board members to consider the best interests of their organization as paramount. Thus, false, or unfounded innuendo against staff members, against other board members, or against other key person founders should not be acted upon, absent conclusive proof of illegal conduct, or the organization could be damaged or destroyed in violation of the board members’ fiduciary responsibilities.

Without such protections, candidates for the board of a nonprofit could claim to share the vision of the founder and then, once on the board, fire the founder and the founder's supporters while using all remaining donated funds to pay themselves high salaries without doing any work for the organization, until all previously donated funds are depleted. That would, of course, violate their fiduciary obligations to the donors.

Most donors likely support a specific nonprofit especially if its founder’s vision and goals align with theirs. They don’t donate their hard-earned funds to financially compensate board members, or to support a board’s sudden rewrite of the non-profit’s mission -- a mission that was originally created by (and successfully promoted by) its key person founder.  

How it works I — FBI/DOJ

Criminal investigations of nonprofits can pressure board members to remove the perceived target of the investigation, often the founder. Whether used as an excuse by a “planted” adversary on the board, or resulting from genuine fear that an investigation will extend into the activities of previously supportive board members, government investigations can be the spark behind a removal facilitated by government rules requiring independent boards.

Not coincidentally, the attempted ouster of AFLDS founder Dr. Gold was preceded by the federal government's selective prosecution and jailing of the doctor for giving a medical speech on government property after January 6th protestors were waived into the building by government employees, while communist terrorists who actually bombed the Capitol were pardoned.

Similarly, the attempted ouster of O'Keefe was preceded by the federal government's selective prosecution of the investigative reporter for receiving, but never publishing, source materials for an article, a leaked diary, while employees of Politico were given a free pass for actually publishing the illegally leaked draft Supreme Court opinion returning abortion policy to states' control. 

How it works II — Board of Directors

In both Dr. Gold's and O'Keefe's cases, the FBI's heavy handed criminal investigations were followed by allegations of the founders' financial excesses omitting to mention that the expenditures were on behalf of the nonprofits. Dr. Gold's use of a home office was described as embezzlement by an alleged board member who claimed the doctor bought it without his knowledge and implied that it was bought in her name, when the purchase was actually set up by that very accuser. He arranged that an AFLDS subsidiary operating out of his own law office acquire the property.

PV board members, for their part, accused O'Keefe of once taking a private plane, without explaining that no commercial airlines offered flights that would have allowed him to participate in a series of meetings with major donors in different cities; meetings which garnered far more funding for PV than the cost of the plane that day.

O'Keefe and Dr. Gold were not given the opportunity to negotiate their continued work for their organizations but were immediately made victims of hostile takeover attempts, to the detriment of the organizations.

To the "detriment of society"

Nearly two decades ago a Brigham Young University Law Review article identified the widespread dangers inherent in ousting founders of nonprofit organizations.

In addition to the fears that takeover activity can provoke within individual non-profits, if it functions as a vehicle for illegitimate transformation of mission, this phenomenon raises sector- and society- wide concerns as well . . . takeover activity might be destructive. It might reroute the organization's financial and ideological resources to goals and actions contrary to those of its major stakeholders; or it might destroy or waste away those resources. 

The non-profit sector is also respected and supported for its strength in preserving the values of its founders and the intent of donors, serving the needs of its beneficiaries and the public . . . If takeovers are used to undermine or dissipate these nonprofit contributions to society, they threaten the sector's ability to play these important roles. They also imperil the trust and respect the public has for nonprofits. If and when nonprofit takeovers do function destructively, their dangers do not remain confined to the organizations affected by them. Rather they have the capacity to undercut the value of the non-profit sector, to the detriment of society in general. [Emphases added].

Benign?

The public has lost faith in the nonprofit system to shield organizations from illegitimate takeovers, with widespread doubts expressed on social media.

Critics surmise that there is no benign explanation for actions board members take that appear to be destructive to their organizations. These actions are a clear violation of their fiduciary duty to ensure that donations are used in a way that best advances their groups' missions. In O’Keefe's case, Twitter users represented the board's moves as leading to the death of the nonprofit.  

Without O’Keefe, they expect donations to dwindle and the organization's mission to go unfulfilled.

In fact, James O’Keefe quickly surpassed the organization in number of followers as his personal Twitter account grew in popularity after his removal while the organization saw a massive departure.

Additionally, significant PV donors hired a law firm to send a cease and desist letter to the board of directors demanding that they not use their donated funds for purposes contrary to the organization's mission.

Whistleblowers who worked with PV also showed their loyalty to O’Keefe with a video compilation.

Brandon Tatum from Salem Media summarized the self-destruction carried out by the board.

James O’Keefe has way more firepower; nobody will even listen to what the board has to say. James O’Keefe was Project Veritas . . . If you lose as many followers as Project Veritas has, you are in no man’s land, and you will lose all your social media engagement. 

Likewise, AFLDS donors want to know what Joey Gilbert — the man behind the attempted ouster of Dr. Gold — is doing to promote medical freedom in order to justify his and another alleged board members' annual salaries of $240,000 each and the $144,000 salary of his personal assistant in his Nevada Law Office, to allegedly also perform part-time work for AFLDS.