Partying at Mar-a-Lago with the New MAGA Media Stars

While major news outlets obsessed over the anticipated release of the Epstein files, Trump-friendly news influencers celebrated how far they’ve come.

“I used to hunt pedophiles,” a man in a tuxedo who calls himself Raider tells me. “It’s a big problem in America.” It’s evening at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, and we are at a black-tie event celebrating YouTubers, news influencers, and an expanding constellation of MAGA-affiliated self-identified reporters: the Citizen Journalist Gala, hosted by Raider’s boss, James O’Keefe. The house band, perched at the edge of a pool, is lacing into a smooth Al Jarreau hit. The singer shouts, “Welcome to paradise!”

For about two decades, O’Keefe, who is forty-one, has captured ostensibly incriminating hidden-camera footage of mid-level government officials and employees at major corporations, in some instances by hiring men and women to pretend to go on dates with targets—a number of whom have subsequently sued O’Keefe and claimed their comments were selectively edited. He is best known for Project Veritas, an organization he founded in 2010. In 2023, he was forced out; the board sued O’Keefe, accusing him of “financial malfeasance” and spending “an excessive amount of donor funds in the last three years on personal luxuries.” He denied wrongdoing, saying, “I don’t know how I can do my job here if I can’t transport myself around the United States.” A lawyer for Project Veritas says the organization dismissed its claims about eight months ago. But O’Keefe has filed counterclaims, which Project Veritas recently moved to dismiss. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is set to rule on Project Veritas’s motion in December.