{"id":264436,"date":"2010-02-02T10:28:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-02T15:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=75505"},"modified":"2010-02-02T10:28:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-02T15:28:51","slug":"james-o%e2%80%99keefe-and-ben-wetmore-get-married","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/264436","title":{"rendered":"James O\u2019Keefe and Ben Wetmore Get Married"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Wetmore, the 28-year-old conservative activist whom James O’Keefe called a “mentor,” has stayed out of the headlines since it was revealed that he housed O’Keefe and the other participants in the bungled sting of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office. When I reached Wetmore by phone yesterday, he politely declined to talk about the situation until it settled down.<\/p>\n

Still, the Wetmore-O’Keefe friendship was, in gonzo journalism terms, a productive one. In 2008, after O’Keefe had left the Leadership Institute, the two men recorded hidden camera video of themselves going to three state offices in Massachusetts, applying for marriage licenses, openly admitting that they were straight men who wanted to get married to take advantage of the benefits.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

O’KEEFE: We probably plan on doing this for about a year and then..
\nCLERK: And then, divorcing.
\nO’KEEFE: Right.
\nCLERK: Yeah.
\nWETMORE: Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The closest thing O’Keefe and Wetmore got to an ACORN moment was a Worcester, Mass., clerk admitting that she wasn’t telling a supervisor about their meeting because she didn’t want to get in trouble. Because the gag didn’t go any further, the stunt got little media attention. Fourteen months later, it reveals just how close O’Keefe and Wetmore were.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Here’s the video:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Wetmore, the 28-year-old conservative activist whom James O’Keefe called a “mentor,” has stayed out of the headlines since it was revealed that he housed O’Keefe and the other participants in the bungled sting of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office. When I reached Wetmore by phone yesterday, he politely declined to talk about the situation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}