KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court this week rejected Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark McCloskey and his wife’s request to give free legal services to the right-wing organization Project Veritas as a condition of their probation.
The court, in an order filed Wednesday, found that the conservative group, which produces undercover videos of Democratic candidates and progressive organizations, did not fit the requirements of an organization that helps Missourians in need.
McCloskey told The Kansas City Star Thursday he would continue submitting to the court political organizations that promote conservative ideas.
The court earlier this year placed the law licenses of McCloskey and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, also an attorney, under probation after they pleaded guilty to misdemeanor crimes in a highly publicized gun-waving incident during a police brutality protest in June 2020.
Under the probation, the St. Louis lawyers are required to give 100 hours of pro bono legal services to organizations that help “poor or indigent Missouri residents.”
The McCloskeys had sought the Supreme Court's approval of Project Veritas after Missouri’s Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel turned down the request.
Conservative activist James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, a conservative 501c4 nonprofit, is known for its “sting” operations against Democrats and media organizations.
In 2018, an employee of Project Veritas posed as an intern to infiltrate then-Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign in order to shoot undercover videos of McCaskill and her staff. The videos were released during the final weeks of McCaskill’s unsuccessful re-election bid against Republican Josh Hawley.
Mark McCloskey, reached by phone Thursday, said he disagreed with the court’s decision. He said he expected it, however, because “there’s only one unforgivable crime in America these days, and that’s standing up against the left.”
Next, he said, he plans to submit to the court an organization that combats Critical Race Theory in schools or transgender students.
“I’m just going to keep picking one conservative organization after another and having the Bar Association and Supreme Court telling me we can’t help conservative people, we can only help left wing people,” he said.
In 2020, the McCloskeys were captured on video holding guns and confronting nonviolent protesters from their lawn as they headed past their house on the way to then-St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s home. No shots were fired and no one was injured.
McCloskey was charged with misdemeanor assault and pleaded guilty, but was later pardoned by Republican Gov. Mike Parson.
