Hannah Giles has resigned as the chief executive of the right-of-center watchdog Project Veritas after serving in the role for less than six months.
The departure was announced in a statement posted to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, in which Giles said she found “strong evidence of past illegality and past financial improprieties.”
Giles did not specify what was discovered or how it was found, but said she “brought the information to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.”
“Though I had high hopes when I joined the organization, I stepped into an unsalvageable mess,” Giles wrote on Monday.
Giles took over in the CEO role following the departure of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, who was suspended by the organization’s board in February.
In August, the Associated Press reported O’Keefe was under investigation by a prosecutor’s office in New York state for allegedly spending “an excessive amount of donor funds” on personal items.
As of Monday, O’Keefe has not been charged with a crime. His personal attorney previously refuted any notion of impropriety, saying the investigation was triggered by “disgruntled former employees of Project Veritas who had a problem with their CEO using too many car services to pay for fundraising efforts which paid their salaries.”
Project Veritas is best known for publishing videos of journalists — typically television news producers — who offer candid thoughts on politics and news production while being surreptitiously filmed by undercover reporters using hidden cameras. PBS, CNN and ABC News were among some of the targets of past Project Veritas exposure campaigns.
