When James O’Keefe dressed up like a telephone repairman and started poking around with Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) phone system, breaking the law, Andrew Breitbart — who backed O’Keefe’s ACORN stings — stood by him. He said Big Government had nothing to do with O’Keefe’s stunt, of course, but he also defended O’Keefe, gave him a platform from which to make a public statement and continued to pay him for his contributions to the BigGovernment site.
But not this time around, as O’Keefe finds himself the subject of condemnation from the right for apparently plotting to “punk” CNN by luring a reporter onto his boat and seducing her.
Breitbart didn’t respond to our requests for comment, but he has been using Twitter to lash out at those who describe O’Keefe as part of Breitbart’s “crew.”
“Not his employer. When criticizing journalism always try to practice good journalism,” he tweeted to Nicole Sandler, a radio host who had retweeted something that called Breitbart O’Keefe’s “employer/coward.”
When Oliver Willis, who writes for Media Matters, tweeted that “@andrewbreitbart’s crew strikes again,” Breitbart shot back, “‘@andrewbreitbart’s crew’? do you want to get sued for libel?”
And the incident hasn’t been mentioned at all on Breitbart’s sites BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com.
In January, after the Landrieu incident, Breitbart told Hugh Hewitt he pays O’Keefe a “fair salary” for posting on Big Government. O’Keefe was still posting as recently as Sept. 24.
