James O’Keefe, Cam Higby Charged With Felonies Over Minnesota Vouching Videos

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Wednesday charged conservative activists James O’Keefe and Cam Higby with felony unlawful voting and identity theft over undercover videos they filmed at Minneapolis polling places during Minnesota’s Aug. 11 primary.

O’Keefe, 42, of West Palm Beach, Fla., and Higby, 26, of Covington, Wash., gave election judges the names of registered voters in those precincts without the voters’ knowledge or permission, the county attorney’s office said. Each count carries up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

“Both men stopped short of signing the oath we all sign before receiving our ballot,” Moriarty said at a news conference. “But Minnesota law states clearly that no individual shall intentionally misrepresent their identity in applying for a ballot.”

The pair were testing Minnesota’s vouching law, which lets a registered voter in the same precinct vouch for up to eight others’ residency on Election Day. Moriarty said they also used names of deceased voters and that she doesn’t know where they got the names, NBC News reported.

O’Keefe said on X in August that the group wore “Muslim garb,” including a full-face veil, to “expose the sheer lunacy of Minnesota’s ‘vouching’ system.” The videos were viewed millions of times.

Activists Call It Lawfare

O’Keefe’s group denied impersonating anyone. “At no point did we claim to be William Pomerantz or any other voter. We stated a name and asked election workers questions about Minnesota’s vouching process,” it said, according to KSTP.

Higby went further on X. “I showed how Minnesota allows cheating in elections. Now they want to TAKE MY RIGHT TO VOTE AWAY. This is lawfare,” he wrote, adding that the charges were meant to scare independent journalists.

The real William Pomeranz, a Minneapolis voter, said he learned of the video from a student. “Kudos to the poll workers. They reported it afterwards, and frankly, I got to vote that evening without a problem,” he told CBS News Minnesota.

Secretary of State Steve Simon, whose office referred the case, said the group “revealed their ignorance of how those laws actually work.” He has said vouching covered 0.6% of Minnesota voters in 2024 and that he recalls no vouching fraud case.

The vouching law has drawn federal scrutiny before. In January the Justice Department demanded Minnesota’s vouching records, and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the law “seems facially inconsistent with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.”

The criminal complaint cites a polling place at 416 35th Ave. NE in Minneapolis, among others. Moriarty said the men are not in custody and will receive a summons to appear in court; no hearing date has been set.

O’Keefe was removed as head of Project Veritas in 2023 and now runs O’Keefe Media Group. Higby, a former reporter for conservative outlets, runs a YouTube channel with about 285,000 subscribers.

The charges land six days before the Nov. 3 general election, as Trump administration officials press Democratic-run states over voter rolls and election safeguards.

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