An undercover video released by the muckraking journalism group Project Veritas on Thursday appears to show several Hillary Clinton campaign workers and volunteers in Nevada openly flouting election law and bragging about it.
The video purports to show an undercover Project Veritas journalist recording the campaign staffers discussing how during voter registration drives they openly endorsed Clinton and the Democratic Party. That’s an apparent violation of election law, which prohibits registration workers from advocating for a candidate or a party.
But the campaign workers appeared to abide by another legal code: “ask for forgiveness, not for permission.”
Several of the Nevada Hillary for America staffers are recorded uttering the mantra in the sting video.
The repeated phrase prompted Project Veritas president James O’Keefe to remark: “Just as with her State Department email scandal, the culture of Clinton’s presidential campaign seems clear: break the law, then ask for forgiveness only if you get caught.”
In one scene of the video, Philip Kim, a paid Hillary for Nevada staffer, is filmed telling a woman during a voter registration effort that, “I would say Hillary is your girl.”
“You should go for a Democrat, but I can’t tell you to do one or the other, that’s not my job,” he added.
In another scene, Harrison Lee, a fellow with Hillary for Nevada, told how he was reprimanded for openly endorsing Clinton outside of a Las Vegas library.
“Yesterday, we got kicked out from — we were told we can’t push [Hillary Rodham Clinton] anymore in front of the library,” Lee said.
Asked why, he explained: “Because they’re afraid of, like, you know, the voter registration being no longer a neutral thing.”
Lee also said that the campaign workers had “been able to get away with asking the Hillary question after voter registration for a long time” at government buildings, the Department of Motor Vehicles and the campus library.
In an exchange filmed at the Nevada field office, another campaign fellow, Henry Engelstein, told how he and Lee were confronted by a worker at the Las Vegas library who explained that they were violating the law.
“She came out with the Nevada statute books and opens it up and starts reading the statute about how you’re allowed to get voter reg,” Engelstein said.
Narrating the sting video, O’Keefe asserts that the statute in question likely came from Nevada election law, which states that it is a felony for a field registrar or employee of a voter registration agency to solicit a vote for or against a particular candidate.
When asked what drew attention from the librarian, the campaign workers said she saw pro-Clinton campaign signs.
“You should just hide all that stuff,” Christina Gupana, a Las Vegas attorney and fellow with Hillary for Nevada fellow, is heard saying on the video.
Later in the recording, when the Project Veritas videographer told how she followed a man into the DMV to give him a voter registration form — in violation of rules prohibiting solicitation at government buildings — Gupana offered encouragement, saying “do whatever you can, whatever you can get away with just do it until you get kicked out.”
“Like within the law, we talk about ask for forgiveness, not for permission,” fellow Phillip Kim chimes in.
The Project Veritas video then flashes snippets of Nevada field office workers repeating the same slogan.
“I mean we kind of abide by the like ask for forgiveness type of thing,” Hillary for Nevada fellow Courtney Kravitz is filmed saying.
“Typically the style of campaigning that we do is like, we just ask, do they support Hillary Clinton. And if we’re not allowed to do that, then we ask for forgiveness,” Harrison Lee says.
This is the third sting video O’Keefe has released from inside the Clinton campaign. It is also contains the most damning evidence yet of questionable campaign activity.
He released a video last month which showed Clinton campaign workers conducting a voter registration drive but avoiding registering people who don’t support Clinton. (RELATED: Sting Video Group Releases Footage From Inside The Clinton Campaign)
That video dropped several days after the Clinton campaign circulated memos about a potential Project Veritas sting operation. The conservative group is known for filming government and campaign officials in compromising situations.
The second video, which was released to much fanfare at a public press conference last week, purported to show a Clinton campaign worker in New York accepting money from a Canadian woman in exchange for a campaign t-shirt. (RELATED: Clinton Campaign Director Violates Campaign Finance Law On Hidden Camera)
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