In August, the storied right-wing influencer-activist-provocateur James O’Keefe launched his latest stunt. Wearing a crude imitation of Islamic garb, he and another influencer, Cam Higby, rolled into a series of Minneapolis voting precincts on primary day.
It was all part of a plan to show the world how Minnesota’s voting system had become vulnerable and ripe for exploitation. To do it, they would pose as different people; they would tell the state officials running Minnesota elections that they were not who they were.
To the feeble-minded among us who might think that this scheme runs the risk, for those involved, of committing a crime — say, identity theft or voter fraud — Higby added a disclaimer at the end of one video.
“I hope you guys understood the point of this video. It wasn’t to break the law. It wasn’t to commit voter fraud,” Higby said. “It was just to point out the vulnerabilities in the system and how easily exploitable it is. I mean, I walked into a polling station with my face covered and non-visible.”
Minnesota law enforcement did not understand the point of the video. On Wednesday, prosecutors with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office filed two felony charges against O’Keefe and Higby. Both face one count of identity theft and one count of using a misrepresented identity to apply for a ballot.
O’Keefe hasn’t replied to the charges yet. Higby promoted an online fundraiser for his case that referred to it as “lawfare,” writing on X, “They want me in PRISON for exposing election vulnerabilities in their state.”
The pair were there to expose the state’s vouching law, they said in the videos. One, released by Higby, is titled, “I Wore Burqa To EXPOSE Election FRAUD In Minneapolis.”
It’s a 50-year old statute that allows a registered voter to vouch for another voter’s eligibility if they live in the same precinct. State officials say it’s rarely used; only 0.6 percent of votes cast in 2024 used the process.
Vouchers sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury to affirm that they know the person for whom they are vouching; state officials also require vouched-for-voters to present other forms of identity. Mary Moriarty, the Hennepin County prosecutor, said that O’Keefe and Higby signed no affidavits.
Instead, prosecutors argued in charging documents, they recorded themselves getting up to the point in the process where they would have had to swear an oath. The pair went to four locations, prosecutors said. At one, Higby allegedly provided someone else’s name to apply for a ballot. That person did not give Higby permission to use their identity, the charging documents say.
When it came time to sign the oath vouching for an unidentified woman with him, Higby purportedly declined to do so. Instead, prosecutors said, he left, claiming that he would return with eight more people.
At another precinct, O’Keefe allegedly applied for a ballot by claiming to be someone who he was not. That person also told prosecutors that he didn’t give O’Keefe permission to use his identity, according to the charging documents.
“Minnesota law clearly states that no individual shall intentionally misrepresent the individual’s identity in applying for a ballot, depositing a ballot in a ballot box or attempting to vote by means of a voting machine or electronic voting system,” a press release from Hennepin County prosecutors reads.
O’Keefe is the granddaddy of the new crop of modern right-wing influencers to which Higby belongs.
Back in 2010, he first made his name by dressing up as a pimp and visiting the offices of ACORN, a national network of community organizations. He released a video that was extremely selectively edited, spawning a scandal that brought the organization down.
Since then, social media platforms have allowed thousands of O’Keefes to bloom. They use similar tactics: outrageous stunts, selective edits, framing that forces an obvious conclusion often not supported by what the activists documented. Higby came up via the “Conservative Hype House,” a 2020 collective of right-wing influencers. He’s since surfaced in even darker contexts, if that’s imaginable: over the last year, Higby has gotten closer to the Trump administration and its crackdown on the left. He claimed at an Antifa roundtable that the White House convened after Charlie Kirk’s killing last year that he faces near-constant violence from leftists: “When I leave my house to go to work, I’m violently assaulted. I’ve had
guns pulled on me. I’ve been bear sprayed. I’ve been beaten down. I’ve been almost killed.”
Since then, Higby and other influencers have become deeply entwined with the Trump administration’s authoritarianism. Nick Shirley, another influencer at the roundtable, later released a video purporting to document fraud in businesses run by Minneapolis’ Somali community. It was classic O’Keefe: selectively edited to the point of muddling what it was trying to show. The White House later cited it in justifying its surge of federal immigration enforcement into the city last winter; Trump gave Shirley $10,000 last week as a thank you.
Higby also appeared in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge. He claimed to have “infiltrated” Signal group chats run by protestors; FBI Director Kash Patel later said the agency would investigate.
Read the O’Keefe charges here:
Read the Higby charges here:
has trump responded yet?
Who gets the million dollar voter fraud fee?
So O’Keefe lives on “Datura Street”? That may explain a lot, 'cause that boy is sure loco.
Isn’t O’Keefe getting a little old for these childish pranks?
As usual he didn’t film the entire encounter. I hope he get arrested and jailed.
He rakes in money doing that shit!
Voter fraud does exist. It just happens to be committed by Republicans.
In the case of self-described “provocateurs” O’Keefe and Higby, I am going to forever call this voter schadenfreude. I hope Minnesota authorities throw the book at them.