Part 2 of 2 continued.  In August 2017, Jorge wrote to Seddon that she had managed to record a local union leader talking about DeVos and other topics. “Good stuff,” Seddon wrote back. “Did you receive the spare camera yet?” As education secretary, DeVos has been a vocal critic of teachers’ unions, saying in 2018 that they have a “stranglehold” over politicians at the federal and state levels. She and Prince grew up in Michigan, where their father made a fortune in the auto parts business. https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/VNDTlIKNxoZxPWI81Wyd9Z8oiY8=/415x294/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/EAE6F3U7NRDBFJWSP5O7ZLKR5M.jpg Erik Prince, chairman of Blackwater USA, testifies during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in 2007. The committee was hearing testimony from officials regarding private security contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Mark Wilson / Getty Images) AFT Michigan sued Project Veritas in federal court, alleging trespassing, eavesdropping and other offenses. The teachers’ union is asking for more than $3 million in damages, accusing the group of being a “vigilante organization which claims to be dedicated to exposing corruption. It is, instead, an entity dedicated to a specific political agenda.” Project Veritas has said its activities are legal and protected by the First Amendment, and the case is scheduled to go to trial in the fall. Other Project Veritas employees on the emails include Joe Halderman, an award-winning former television producer who in 2010 pleaded guilty to trying to extort $2 million from the comedian David Letterman. Halderman was copied on several messages providing updates about the Michigan operation, and in one message, he gave instructions to Jorge. Project Veritas tax filings list Halderman as a “project manager.” Two other employees, Gaz Thomas and Samuel Chamberlain, were also identified in emails and appeared to play important roles in the Michigan operation. Efforts to locate Thomas were unsuccessful. A man named Samuel Chamberlain who matched the description of the one employed by O’Keefe denied he worked for Project Veritas. He did not respond to follow-up phone messages or an email. Last year, Project Veritas submitted a proposed list of witnesses for the trial over the lawsuit. Chamberlain and Thomas were on the list. Seddon was not. Jorge, 23, did not respond to email addresses associated with her Liberty University account. In an archived version of her LinkedIn page, Jorge wrote she had a deep interest in the conservative movement and hoped one day to serve on the Supreme Court after attending law school. In a YouTube video, O’Keefe described the lawsuit as “frivolous” and pointed to a portion of the deposition in which David Hecker, president of AFT Michigan, said that one of the goals of the lawsuit was to “stop Project Veritas from doing the kind of work that it does.” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a statement: “Let’s be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy — and they got caught. We’re just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage.” In 2018, Jorge infiltrated the congressional campaign of Spanberger, posing as a campaign volunteer. At the time, Spanberger was running to unseat a sitting Republican congressman in a race both parties considered important for control of the House. Jorge was eventually exposed and kicked out of the campaign office. It was unclear whether Seddon was involved in planning that operation. Seddon was a longtime British intelligence officer who served around the world, including in Washington in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He is married to an American diplomat, Alice Seddon, who is serving in the U.S. consulate in Lagos, Nigeria. O’Keefe and his group have taken aim at targets over the years including Planned Parenthood, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Democracy Partners, a group that consults with liberal and progressive electoral causes. In 2016, a Project Veritas operative infiltrated Democracy Partners using a fake name and fabricated resume and made secret recordings of the staff. The year after the sting, Democracy Partners sued Project Veritas, and its lawyers have since deposed O’Keefe. In that deposition, O’Keefe defended the group’s undercover tactics, saying they were part of a long tradition of investigative journalism going back to muckraking reporters like Upton Sinclair. “I’m not ashamed of the methods that we use or the recordings that we use,” he said. He was asked whether he had provided any of the group’s secret recordings of Democracy Partners to the Republican National Committee or any member of the Trump family. He said that he did not think so. In 2010, O’ Keefe and three others pleaded guilty to a federal misdemeanor after admitting they entered a government building in New Orleans under false pretenses as part of a sting.  source - https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-erik-prince-spies-liberal-groups-20200307-6xcvuopzzzaahbwtdruzi3ytnm-story.html