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James O'Keefe says he has tapes from inside CNN

James O'Keefe makes a statement after leaving the federal courthouse in New Orleans. O'Keefe has announced plans to release recordings on Feb. 23, 2017, that he said were made secretly inside CNN.

Conservative activist James O'Keefe says he has more than 100 hours of audio recorded secretly from inside of the headquarters of CNN, which he plans to make public.

O’Keefe, founder of the website Project Veritas, says he will release the recordings he says shows CNN misrepresenting polling data. The audio was recorded by someone O’Keefe identifies as “Miss X.”

When asked why he had made the recordings and why he planned to release them, O'Keefe told a CNN interviewer that the network, "has a very important role as an arbiter of news."

"My audience, the American people, are deeply upset at the media,” O’Keefe said. "We think our media needs to be held to account, and CNN is kind of the leader of that. CNN has a very important role as an arbiter of news."

O'Keefe became well-known in 2009 after he went undercover, posing as a pimp, in a video to embarrass community-organizing group ACORN. In 2010, he was arrested at Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's office, and later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for entering federal property under false pretenses.