The Los Angeles Times reported that right-wing investigative reporter/provocateur James O’Keefe has agreed to pay $100,000 to Juan Carlos Vera, a former ACORN employee, for filming him without his knowledge in a 2009 video sting. O’Keefe states in the court filings that he “regrets any pain suffered by Mr. Vera or his family.”
The Times reported:
The video, aired repeatedly on television, appears to show that Vera was willing to help O’Keefe smuggle underage girls into the U.S. to act as prostitutes. O’Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, had gone to the ACORN office without an invitation.
In the settlement, O’Keefe says that before the video was shown on TV or posted on the Web, he was unaware of Vera’s assertion that he had called the police to report O’Keefe and Giles for proposing an illegal act.
Vera’s lawsuit was filed by Eugene Iredale, one of San Diego’s top criminal defense and civil rights attorneys. The lawsuit was filed on the assertion that O’Keefe broke a state law prohibiting the surreptitious recording of someone’s voice and image.
But O’Keefe’s attorney, Michael Madigan from a Los Angeles firm, called the $100,000 payment a “nuisance settlement” and said that O’Keefe “has a full career ahead as a talented investigative journalist.”
