(LifeSiteNews) — Project Veritas has been hemorrhaging followers on Twitter since parting ways with its founder and leader James O’Keefe on Monday.

Earlier this week, writer and commentator Mike Cernovich tweeted statistics showing daily changes to the official @Project_Veritas Twitter account. The data showed a loss of at least 252,857 followers in the 24 hours after the split between O’Keefe and the conservative undercover journalism operation.

The Project Veritas account initially lost a few thousand followers on February 10 and 11 after the emergence of rumors that O’Keefe was about to be ousted from his position on the Board of Directors. Eight consecutive days of modest follower gains then occurred before this week’s sharp decline.

As of Thursday afternoon, Project Veritas’ account has roughly 1.1 million followers and the personal account of James O’Keefe sports 1.3 million.

Over 250,000 lost followers for Project Veritas. It’s been one day. pic.twitter.com/QYWUOckMpe

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 21, 2023

O’Keefe’s departure from Project Veritas came as a stunning development shortly after the group made waves with a bombshell report about Pfizer. Last month, Project Veritas staff had secured a sitdown with Pfizer’s director of research, Jordon Walker, who told them about potential plans to intentionally create mutated strains of COVID-19 to develop and sell more vaccines. Pfizer denies the existence of such plans.

Around two weeks after the report emerged, however, Project Veritas began making headlines over allegations that O’Keefe was placed on administrative leave. Although the two sides did officially part days later, O’Keefe has claimed Project Veritas board members “stripped” him of his authority and removed him from the board, while the group insists he resigned of his own volition. More fuel was added to the controversy after two former members of Project Veritas seemed to give conflicting accounts of what happened.

In a Monday video filmed at Project Veritas headquarters, O’Keefe said his removal from the company stemmed from “tactical disagreements” with other board members pertaining to fundraising and content production.

O’Keefe added that he is “not done” fulfilling the “mission” at the core of why he founded and led Project Veritas. In his Twitter bio, he refers to himself as an independent “guerrilla journalist.”

Since it’s already out there, here are my heartfelt remarks to my staff this morning.

I need to make clear I have not resigned from the company, Project Veritas, I founded 13 years ago. I was stripped of my position as CEO and Chairman.

I came to the PV pic.twitter.com/NwHivwR1EM… https://t.co/X1lKCnwuif

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) February 21, 2023