Right-wing influencer James O’Keefe charged with voter fraud after impersonating registered voters

Right-wing influencers James O’Keefe and Cam Higby have been charged by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty for unlawful voting and identity theft after they pulled a dress-up stunt during the Aug. 11 statewide primary election, unsuccessfully trying to show that Minnesota’s defense against voter fraud is insufficient.

The men posted videos in August in which they went into different Minnesota polling places to attempt to register to vote using Minnesota’s vouching process, through which a registered voter can confirm up to eight voters’ addresses so that they can also be registered to vote. The two donned clothes traditionally worn by Muslims — Higby wore a niqab, a garment traditionally worn by Muslim women — and put on fake foreign accents.

The men used names of registered voters, some deceased, to begin the vouching process, Moriarty said at a Wednesday press conference. They stopped short of signing an oath under penalty of perjury, which Moriarty said is a major deterrent against people misusing the vouching option.

Still, Moriarty’s office is charging the two for violating a state law that forbids people from misrepresenting their identities when applying for a ballot, because the application is a “multi-step process” that they began, Moriarty said.

The charges come less than a week away from Minnesota’s Nov. 3 general election.

In recent months, Minnesota has faced heightened federal scrutiny regarding its elections. In September, federal prosecutors charged 10 people with illegally voting or registering to vote in Minnesota elections. Moriarty said she’s unaware of any federal investigation into O’Keefe and Higby’s voting registration attempt.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly sought to discredit the election process, which is administered by states under the Constitution, and his administration has, largely unsuccessfully, tried to gain more control over elections, for example by attempting to acquire Minnesota’s unredacted voting roll.

The videos claimed to expose Minnesota’s vouching process as vulnerable to fraud, but did not show O’Keefe and Higby leaving before signing the oath, Moriarty noted.

“In fact, when they were at the polling place, they made excuses to leave as soon as the election judge asked them to sign the oath,” Moriarty said.

Right-wing provocateur O’Keefe, 42, is known for making secretly recorded and often selectively edited undercover videos with Project Veritas, the far-right activist group he founded and from which he was later fired — stunts that have resulted in prior encounters with law enforcement.

In 2010, along with other Project Veritas activists, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor for entering former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office while posing as a telephone repairman. He paid a $1,500 fine and was placed on three years probation. In 2013, he was investigated by New Hampshire’s attorney general for giving names of dead people to election officials, though that investigation was dropped.

Higby, 26, is a conservative influencer who is known for organizing a college debates tour in honor of Charlie Kirk. Higby came to Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge and claimed to have “infiltrated” Signal groups of ICE observers, whom First Amendment lawyers said were protected by Constitution in their efforts to follow and document federal agents’ activities.

Higby posted on X within an hour of the charges being announced: “They want me in PRISON for exposing election vulnerabilities in their state.” He shared a fundraiser titled “Support Cam Higby (Minnesota Burqa Lawfare)” with a fundraising goal of $20,000.

Moriarty said that her office had enough evidence to charge the men without the video, since they knew the two registered to vote using other people’s names. Police also interviewed election judges in different polling places, who noted the “strange behavior” of O’Keefe and Higby, Moriarty said.

Minnesota’s vouching system is over 50 years old, though is sparsely used — less than 0.6% of votes cast in the 2024 general election used the vouching process, Moriarty said. The process is most commonly used by residents of senior living facilities or those who have recently moved. People registering through vouching still need to provide a Minnesota driver’s license number, Minnesota ID card number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. If they attest to not having those numbers, they are assigned a unique voter number for identification by the state, to enable tracking and prevent duplicate voting.

Moriarty said that O’Keefe and Higby’s intentions to not vote and their derogatory comments did not factor into the charges.

“It is not against the law to be performative. It is not against the law to be offensive, it’s not against the law to say the things that they said if you’re standing outside the polling place,” Moriarty said.

“The fundamental issue here is you cannot go into a polling place and misidentify yourself, use other people’s identity, and say that to our election judges as you apply for the ballot, whether or not you intend to vote.”