In a 12-minute interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity last night, a subdued James O’Keefe said he is cooperating with the U.S. Attorney in Louisiana and that in the future he will “try to be a little more thoughtful about how I approach these things.”
“This is a huge misunderstanding,” said O’Keefe, who is criminally charged with three other men in the Landrieu phone tampering case.
O’Keefe repeated his claim that his intention in entering Landrieu’s office on Jan. 25 was to document reports that calls from constituents opposed to health care reform were not getting through to Landrieu’s office.
“Investigative journalists have been using a lot of these tactics for years,” he said, citing 20/20 and 60 Minutes (while Hannity floated a comparison of the Landrieu caper to NBC’s To Catch A Predator).
Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced yesterday that U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Jim Letten recused himself from the case on Jan. 26, the day after the arrests. The DOJ did not explain the move. Jan Mann, first assistant U.S. Attorney, is handling the case.
Asked by Hannity about the whether O’Keefe was denied access to an attorney while in jail — a charge made by conservative media figure Andrew Breitbart yesterday — O’Keefe responded: “That may come out .. but right now I don’t want to talk about that.”
He also said he had no complaints about how the U.S. Attorney’s office was handling the case. That’s in contrast to Breitbart, who accused the office of making damaging leaks to the press, allegedly because of his aggressiveness in calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate ACORN. In an interview with TPMmuckraker yesterday, Mann said Breitbart’s charges are baseless.
As for O’Keefe — who was ordered by the judge in the case to live with his parents — he told Hannity his legal troubles won’t stop him from continuing the fight.
“Right now we’re hitting the ground running on more projects. Our goal is to expose truth, expose corruption until it’s gone.”
Watch the interview, part one:
And part two:
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