Ex-US Attorney Calls James O’Keefe ‘A Nasty Little Cowardly Spud’

[Capt. Obvious]

...

In a video released by O'Keefe's Project Veritas on Monday, former U.S. Attorney James Letten can be seen shouting at O'Keefe and his colleagues. Letten can also be seen filming O'Keefe with his own smart phone.

"You went to my house, you terrorized my wife, you're violating federal law, you're trespassing, you're a nasty little cowardly spud," Letten says in the video. "All of you, you're hobbits. You are less than I can ever tell you. You are scum. Do you understand?"

The video also shows O'Keefe going to Letten's house and speaking with his wife.

Letten recused himself from O'Keefe's phone-tampering case in 2010. With the cameras rolling, O'Keefe tried to hand Letten a copy of his book, "Breakthrough: Our Guerilla War to Expose Fraud and Save Democracy." Letten then throws the book back at O'Keefe, an act O'Keefe lables a "minor assault in front of police." This is an O'Keefe video, so the usual caveats and grains of salt apply.

White pimpin' ain't easy

[Lint Head]

1. I cannot click on the link for a video that was created by cowardly pond scum.

[Capt. Obvious]

16. The link is to TPM

[KittyWampus]

2. LOL! Great use of adjectives… although as a potato lover I object to the use of "spud".

[SwissTony]

8. I agree. and, even worse, the use of the word...

"hobbit"!!! How dare he? I need to go and lie down.

[Warpy]

18. "Pipsqueak" would have been much better, I agree

It's the word that always enters my mind when I see a picture of him. "Picked chicken" is the next phrase.

[Marie Marie]

19. "Weasel" is what comes to my mind.

But I love "picked chicken"! Kudos Warpy!

[cali]

3. Swoon. I love that guy. That was just beautiful

this should be on the top of the Greatest Page.

thank you, thank you for posting this.

[Capt. Obvious]

11. I was going to post it in LBN

but didn't know if this qualified as "news"

[dionysus]

13. he took down that nastly little piece of shit with grace...

btw, I can't believe o'keefe is still out there playing his little games...

[cali]

14. he sure did. didn't skip a beat

I thought it was a riot that the little coward called Letten tossing a book to him "minor assault".

[hobbit709]

4. Perfectly accurate description.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. James Letten sounds fucking awesome.

That is all.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

10. On second thought, only one complaint: He shouldn't have called them "hobbits."

Hobbits in the world of Tolkien were an honorable and dignified race of beings known for trying to do the right thing and stand up against evil.

James O'Keefe is neither honorable nor dignified, and wouldn't know the first thing about doing the right thing.

[adieu]

24. Well, to be fair

Gollum/Smeagol was a hobbit who turned evil. It just might require O'Keefe to be that Smeagol to infiltrate the GOP and completely destroy it from the inside.

[MattBaggins]

30. I am outraged I tell you, outraged

[KeepItReal]

15. Letten is a GOP appointee whose operation resigned in shame

Online commenting scandal ends Jim Letten's 11-year run as U.S. Attorney

Abruptly ending an 11-year run highlighted by the convictions of more than a dozen crooked politicians, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten resigned Thursday morning amid a metastasizing scandal in his office that started with prosecutors posting anonymous screeds on NOLA.com. Letten was the nation's longest-serving U.S. attorney, having been kept in the job by President Barack Obama despite his Republican affiliation.

Ironically, his fall was engineered by Fred Heebe, the landfill magnate who very nearly became U.S. attorney himself after George W. Bush was elected president -- and then, years later, found himself a target of the office.

While it was Heebe's filing of a defamation lawsuit that set Letten's downfall in motion, he was finally done in by the failure of his most trusted lieutenant -- First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann -- to admit that she, too, had been posting vituperative online comments about federal targets.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/12/online_commenting_scandal_ends.html

[joeybee12]

6. I know nothing about James Letten other than this...

And I love him!

[pansypoo53219]

7. i discovered the word gleet. look it up.

works for me for his ilk.

[KittyWampus]

20. Ugh, I did look it up. Ewww.

[UtahLib]

9. Speaking the truth to a cowardly pond scum maggot. n/t

[Gothmog]

12. O'Keefe is indeed a coward

O'Keefe's publication of this video is strange in that he does not come off well

[Jim Lane]

26. It's not strange that an attention whore like O'Keefe would post the video.

People like him follow the old axiom that bad publicity is good publicity because any publicity is good publicity.

In this video, someone is reacting to him. Someone is paying attention to him. He matters. What's more, his posting of it resulted in another TPM article about him -- an article he surely read, after finding it when he avidly Googled himself.

[barbtries]

17. it must have taken more self control than i possess

to use the word "spud" - o'keefe is such slime.
he must be a sociopath. our country is very sick indeed if there is even one person besides himself who believes him to be a defender of democracy, or any kind of journalist.

[DeSwiss]

21. ''....you're violating federal law.''

- K&R

[AnotherMcIntosh]

22. I otherwise don't mind Letten calling O'Keefe a name, but "spud"? Racism should not be tolerated.

[sabrina 1]

23. Why is he not in jail? Didn't he violate his parole and assault

a couple of women which should have been enough for us never to hear from him again?

[Blue_Tires]

32. I haven't been able to prove it

But I've long maintained that his little dirty tricks "operation" is closely protected on high by some *very* powerful people -- The type who can get serious charges dropped with just a phone call...

No one can do what he does with impunity unless there is some serious clout behind him...

[Jim Lane]

25. O'Keefe lies in the video.

After Letten tells him he's trespassing, the police officer reminds him that Tulane University is private property. O'Keefe, in the voiceover narration beginning at around 3:49, says what I think is "Note the Supreme Court establishes that members of the general public have the right to walk on the grounds of a university even if they have no connection with the university." Meanwhile the visual is a pan of the syllabus of a United States Supreme Court decision in Princeton University v. Schmid, 445 U.S. 100 (1982). Thus he's clearly implying that that was the holding in the Princeton case.

If, however, you pause the video to read the text onscreen, that's not what it says. Instead, it says that Princeton changed its regulations after the incident giving rise to the lawsuit, that the new regulations haven't been considered by the lower court, and that the issue of the constitutionality of the old regulations is therefore moot. The appeal was "dismissed for want of jurisdiction" (per the syllabus; I haven't bothered to read the full decision).

The dismissal of an appeal on justiciability grounds does not establish that the point of law embodied in the decision appealed from was correct.

[Ed Suspicious]

27. The guy is a little hard on hobbits. That I wasn't a fan of. :)

[MotherPetrie]

28. K&R

[Blue Owl]

29. Project Fuckstick

Go to hell James O Fucking Keefe.

[LTR]

31. Did O'Keefe commit a felony?

I would think that harassing and intimidating a member (or former member) of the very US Attorney's office that prosecuted his worthless ass would result in some serious criminal charges.

[KamaAina]

33. How is O'Keefe not in prison?