Republicans have strong ties to Project Veritas, and reports suggest the party knew about its efforts to delegitimize mail-in balloting in advance.
The right-wing group has routinely published edited videos that push its narrative on voter fraud. For instance, O’Keefe selectively edited footage of an operative asking for the ballot of a recently deceased person, omitting footage where the operative clarifies that he is asking for the ballot of the son of the deceased person. In another video, Project Veritas claimed non-citizens were voting; but the person they identified was a naturalized citizen.
In September, Project Veritas released a video alleging Representative Ilhan Omar’s campaign had collected ballots illegally from elderly Somali immigrants in a Minneapolis district. While it was proven that the video was published to intentionally spread falsehood, research by the University of Washington and Stanford University found that the video was probably part of a "coordinated disinformation effort", reported the New York Times. Roughly an hour after The Times published its investigation into Trump's tax returns, Mike Lindell, honorary chairman of Trump’s Minnesota campaign, tweeted a video saying that Project Veritas would publish an expose that evening. Trump Jr. tweeted the video minutes after it's release — it was further retweeted by the president's war room account. The "timing and metadata of a Twitter post in which Mr. Trump’s son shared the video suggested that he might have known about it in advance," according to The Times' report.
In response to the article, Project Veritas sued the New York Times alleging that it was defamatory to call the group “deceptive.”
In August this year, The New Republic alleged that O’Keefe’s efforts to delegitimize mail-in balloting is "a campaign being led by the White House." In its investigation, it claimed that Project Veritas associates had managed to stir up some public alarm about alleged balloting fraud in cooperation with elected officials from the Republican Party in Texas. According to their findings, the "GOP subtly coordinates with its army of right-wing irregulars in the field."
In conclusion, although there isn't enough evidence to suggest Republicans joined hands with Project Veritas in a concerted effort to undermine the integrity of absentee and mail-in ballot counts, strong links and several reports suggest the GOP had some knowledge of their disinformation campaign.
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