Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe landed his first victory in his lawsuit against Twitter. The social media company’s attempt to have the case transferred to a “friendly court” was defeated.
A federal court in Manhattan ruled to take back the case to the state level. The case will be heard at the New York Supreme Court.
Critics believe that Twitter wanted the case transferred to a favorable federal court in California, where courts often dismiss cases brought against Silicon Valley companies.
In the argument for the case to be transferred to the federal level, Twitter cited the defamatory damages amount O’Keefe would seek, saying the amount would be over $75,000. However, O’Keefe’s lawsuit is “about justice, not money.”
Prioritizing justice over money undermined Twitter’s argument for the case to be transferred to the federal level.
In an announcement made Tuesday, Project Veritas said: “O’Keefe is looking forward to the opportunity of conducting discovery on Twitter and finding out who were the responsible parties within the Big Tech company involved in the decision to suspend his account and issue the defamatory reasoning for doing so.”
O’Keefe was permanently banned on Twitter in April following Project Veritas’ series of viral #ExposeCNN videos. The videos featured CNN’s technical director Charlie Chester making a series of admissions.
In one of the videos, Chester boasted that the network’s partisan coverage helped get Trump voted out.
“Look what we did, we got Trump out. I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out … I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that,” he said.
Chester also admitted the network used COVID-19 numbers to increase engagement.
