James O'Keefe and Cam Higby wanted to prove that Minnesota's election system is a fraud-riddled mess, so they put on what they called "Muslim garb," walked into polling places, and gave election judges the names of real voters, some of them dead. The system caught them. Now Hennepin County is charging both men with felony unlawful voting and identity theft.
The Stunt That Became Exhibit A
Here's the setup, per The Guardian and CBS News. During Minnesota's Aug. 11 primary, O'Keefe, 42, the ousted founder of Project Veritas, and Higby, 26, visited multiple precincts in Hennepin County. They filmed themselves with hidden cameras. They wore disguises that O'Keefe himself described on X as "Muslim garb," including, for one of them, a full-face niqab. CBS News reports the video shows fake accents on top of the costumes.
Their stated goal was to "expose the sheer lunacy of Minnesota's 'vouching' system." Vouching lets a registered voter in a precinct attest that another person lives there. It is rarely used, accounting for less than 0.6 percent of votes in the 2024 general election, mostly by people updating a name or address.
The videos were seen millions of times. They also turned out to be a detailed, high-definition confession.
Real Names, Some of Them Belonging to the Dead
This is where the stunt stops being a prank and starts being a crime. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said the two men identified themselves to election judges using the names of actual registered voters in those precincts, without those voters' knowledge or permission. Some of those voters were dead. Others were very much alive.
In the video, O'Keefe falsely identifies himself as William Pomeranz. The real William Pomeranz found out when a student sent him the footage. "That was pretty much a shock," he told CBS News Minnesota. He found out on a Friday. He had already voted, without a problem, that Election Day.
Where did the pair get the names? Asked that directly, Moriarty said, "We don't know that." That's a question someone should be asking loudly, considering the people who spend their lives screaming about the integrity of voter rolls apparently obtained a list of names to impersonate.
The Safeguards Worked, Which Is the Whole Problem for Them
O'Keefe and Higby's pitch was that vouching is an open door for cheating. But the system has locks. Vouchers have to sign an affidavit under penalty of perjury swearing they personally know the voter. Voters still need other ways to verify identity. A single voucher can vouch for up to eight people, not an unlimited parade.
And here's the part that undercuts the entire premise: the two men stopped short. Moriarty said they did not sign the affidavits and did not obtain ballots. Signing would have been perjury. Election judges flagged their "strange behavior," reported it, and the Secretary of State's office alerted prosecutors. Pomeranz put it plainly: "Kudos to the poll workers. They reported it afterwards... the voting process, in my mind, worked."
So the grand exposé of Minnesota's broken elections is a video of Minnesota's election workers noticing two guys in costumes lying about who they were and doing their jobs. Not exactly the smoking gun.
"Lawfare" Is Not a Legal Defense
Higby's response has been predictable. He called the charges "lawfare," insisted "no laws were broken," and posted on X that Minnesota wants to "TAKE MY RIGHT TO VOTE AWAY." He added, in all caps, "This is FASCISM." There was, naturally, a link to a fundraising page for his legal expenses.
Neither the law nor the prosecutor agrees with him. Minnesota law bars intentionally misrepresenting your identity when applying for a ballot, and Moriarty pointed out that the statute is clear. Secretary of State Steve Simon said back in August that "you can't impersonate another registered voter, and that's exactly what they appear to have filmed themselves doing." David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University, said the same.
The journalism defense doesn't hold either, according to Moriarty. "If you identify as a journalist, there is no such thing as undercover investigation in the polling place," she said. "You have to identify yourself as a journalist in the polling place, which they did not do." She also noted her office could have brought the case without the videos, thanks to what the election judges observed.
Prosecutors Say Politics Had Nothing to Do With It
Moriarty was careful to say the men's politics and the intent of their video played no role in the charging decision. "It is not against the law to be offensive," she said. "It's not against the law to say the things that they said if you're standing outside the polling place." The case, she said, rests on what happened inside.
Simon, the Secretary of State, framed it as protecting polling places as "islands of calm," the schools, churches, and senior centers where people vote. "Any attempt to disrupt or deceive our election workers will not be tolerated," he said.
The two men won't be arrested. They will get a summons to appear in a Minnesota court, and no date has been announced. O'Keefe and Higby did not immediately respond to NBC News requests for comment.
The Backdrop Is Trump's Fraud Fixation
None of this happens in a vacuum. Donald Trump has spent years making unsubstantiated claims of election fraud, and he has made Minnesota a recurring target, repeatedly claiming he won the state three times. He lost it three times. The Trump administration has also been targeting Democratic-controlled states in an effort to obtain voter roll lists and identify alleged noncitizen voters.
That is the ecosystem O'Keefe and Higby operate in. Footage of a fake fraud attempt is valuable in that world whether or not the fraud is real, because the point is the clip, not the conclusion. Millions of views of two guys in disguises is the product.
The Dingo Take
Impersonating real voters is a felony, and these two filmed themselves doing it.
Think about the sheer cosmic comedy here. The pitch was that Minnesota's election system is dangerously easy to cheat. The evidence offered was a video in which election workers spotted the con, flagged it, and referred it to prosecutors, while the real William Pomeranz went on to vote without incident. If that's a vulnerability, I'd hate to see what a working safeguard looks like. And the costume angle adds nothing but the usual ugliness, a grown man in a niqab doing a fake accent to suggest that Muslim voters are the threat to the ballot box.
The "journalism" defense deserves its own funeral. Real undercover reporting does not involve borrowing the names of dead people and live ones who never agreed to it, then asking for a GoFundMe when the bill comes due. O'Keefe has been in this business long enough to know the difference between exposing a problem and manufacturing one. The courts will sort out the rest. Whether the people who watched those videos millions of times ever notice that the system they were told was broken just worked is another matter entirely.
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