There’s a bit of recapitulation of O’Keefe’s recent videos here, but the fun new gag here is how the meat is all wrapped inside the tasty bread of foreign donations. In this video, the Project Veritas purchased a shell company based in Belize, opened a bank account in Belize, and donated $20,000 to Hillary-connected operatives. They recorded proof that the operatives had received the money, and made reference to the fact that it was coming through a Belize bank. The best evidence of the operatives’ knowledge that the money was an illegal donation of foreign money is that the operatives returned the money the second the Veritas videos started to come out . . . even though they had acknowledged receiving the donation weeks before.

Ha!

The video does feel poorly narrated and rather hastily slapped together, with tantalizing bits presented devoid of context. The now-famous Scott Foval, told that the “donor” wanted to get his hands dirty, responds at one point: “If he wants to get dirty, we can get dirty.” But what is he talking about? The fake donor, Charles Roth, is able to get his “niece” (actually a Project Veritas journalist) offered an internship at Bob Creamer’s Democracy Partners, but we don’t know what her alleged qualifications were. There is a brief and unsatisfying interlude, not well explained, with a guy named Cesar Vargas, the founder of an organization called the “Dream Action Coalition.” Vargas is billed by Foval as “the guy who can get things done,” which is plenty vague. At one point, the transcript indicates that Vargas says:

What’s the goal of our overall campaign? Yeah and for me I totally get it, this is illegal, this is something that can be done.

But to me it sounds more like this:

What’s the goal of our overall campaign? Yeah and for me as an attorney I get it, this [unintelligible], this is, yeah.

The journalist goes on, allegedly, to tell Vargas not to repeat their conversations to anybody, because this is “technically . . . voter fraud.” But it’s hard to hear the words “voter fraud” — and if the person watching the video can’t hear it, maybe Vargas can’t either. Exactly what they are discussing is never really explained. All of this begins around 9:30 in the video below.

After that, there’s plenty of footage of Bob Creamer boasting of his connections to the Clinton campaign, and how he is regularly on conference calls with her campaign headquarters about what the earned media message will be for that day. O’Keefe points out that Creamer regularly visited the White House, according to official logs, with 342 visits to the White House, and 47 with Obama. Creamer is happily offering influence to anyone with money. Which shocks precisely nobody.

It’s a bit of a mishmash, and a rather disappointing and confusing ending (at least, it feels like an ending) to a pretty good series of videos.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

The post is titled: If LawBot Wants To Know About My Anus I’m Sure It Has A Reason.

It’s Ken White purporting to seek advice from a robot lawyer.

Click, and laugh.

Lost in the ruckus over Newt Gingrich shouting at Megyn Kelly last night (YOU SAY BILL CLINTON WAS A SEXUAL PREDATOR!) was the debate they had early on about early voting. Gingrich claimed the picture was all rosy for Donald Trump:

GINGRICH: Republicans are actually outvoting Democrats in Florida, they’re outvoting Democrats in Pennsylvania. That’s unprecedented. They’ve cut the Democratic lead —

KELLY: You predict a win in Pennsylvania?

GINGRICH: I think they might.

KELLY: Really? You think Trump’s gonna win Pennsylvania.

GINGRICH: Look, all I can report to you right now is, they’re outvoting the Democrats in early voting, uh, which is also true in Florida, which is unprecedented.

KELLY: All of the polls in Pennsylvania have her winning.

GINGRICH: What?

KELLY: All of the polls in Pennsylvania have her ahead.

GINGRICH:I know. I just told you, We have two alternative universes right now. In Iowa, for example, the Democrats are 50,000 votes behind where they were with Barack Obama in turnout. The governor is very confident we’re going to carry Iowa which Obama carried last time. I can just carry you through case after case like this.

Is he right? POLITICO says, on the contrary, things are looking bleak for Republicans in early voting (cached link) — including in Florida, where Republicans have a smaller lead at this point than they had in 2012:

In Nevada, where early in-person voting began on Saturday, Democratic voters cast 23,000 more ballots than Republicans as of Tuesday afternoon, good for a 15-percentage-point edge in the nearly 150,000 ballots cast. (Mail in and absentee ballots narrow the gap slightly).

Polling and early voting returns suggest Democrats are maintaining an edge in North Carolina, and they are also slicing into a thinner-than-expected early vote lead for Republicans in Florida, who now lead by about half a percentage point; in 2012, the GOP held a much more significant edge two weeks from Election Day. Women in Florida are casting early ballots in far greater numbers than four years ago, and Hispanic turnout is surging as well, according to data released by the Clinton campaign. Polls suggest that both constituencies are strongly Democratic this year.

In Colorado — where Democrats hold a voter registration edge for the first time — early returns give the party a 23,000-vote lead in returned and in-person ballots. In Arizona, which last went Democratic in 1996, Democrats held a thin early-vote lead on Monday.

As a reminder: Barack Obama won Florida in 2012.

As for Pennsylvania, I don’t know where Gingrich is getting his early voting numbers, as I can’t find a story reporting them. But Pennsylvania does not have early voting as a general rule — so any numbers Gingrich might have are a very small sample and not representative. What’s more, as Kelly points out, Hillary is ahead in all the polls there.

Newt has a point with Iowa. Things are looking OK for Trump there, and in Ohio. But, um, don’t get too excited:

Things do not look so rosy for Democrats in two other battleground states with heavy early voting: Iowa (44 percent of the vote cast early in 2012) and Ohio (33 percent in 2012). Iowa Democrats have always prided themselves on an outstanding early-voting operation, but they are running well behind their 2012 numbers. And in Ohio, which does not have party registration, the main danger sign for Democrats is lagging early voting in the big urban centers of Cleveland and Columbus.

Ohio and Iowa have been Trump’s two best battleground states. So while it is encouraging for his cause that he’s doing relatively well in early voting in those two states, it’s more significant that he’s doing not-so-well in Florida and North Carolina, both of which he badly needs to get to 270 electoral votes.

It looks like Gingrich was looking for optimistic data wherever he could find it, and putting a brave face on what is a dismal situation. He’s not a dumb guy, though, and he has to know the reality — and it had to be frustrating him as he was talking to Megyn Kelly.

No wonder he started yelling at her.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]