ATI Government Solutions sued the U.S. Small Business Administration and its head, Kelly Loeffler, alleging that its federal government contracts were suspended solely based on videos by a rightwing activist video and causing hundreds of millions in business losses.
Solution provider ATI Government Solutions Thursday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Small Business Administration and Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the SBA, alleging that the SBA suspended the company from all government contracts based on what it called an “obviously edited video” made by rightwing activist James O’Keefe.
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Frederick, Md.-based ATI Government Solutions and several subsidiaries allege that the SBA and Loeffler, in what the lawsuit called “a brazen abuse of government power,” moved to interfere with contracts, undermine government efficiency, and destroy a small business “based on the false, misleading, and unfounded allegations of an untrustworthy known online provocateur.”
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That “provocateur” was identified in the suit as James O’Keefe, a rightwing activist and founder of O’Keefe Media Group. O’Keefe is perhaps best known for his association with the Veritas Project, which operated for years by using undercover operations, hidden cameras and, according to critics, selective editing of videos under the guise of journalism to target mainstream media and progressive organizations. O’Keefe was forced out of Project Veritas in 2023 and founded O’Keefe Media Group shortly thereafter.
CRN reached out to ATI Government Solutions via phone and to the SBA and O’Keefe Media Group via email. ATI Government Solutions and O’Keefe Media Group have not responded to a CRN request for more information, while the SBA told CRN that it does not comment on active litigation.
ATI Government Solutions and its affiliates are all wholly or majority-beneficially owned by the Susanville Indian Rancheria Tribe. The company writes that its business activities, including government contracts, are key sources of income for the tribe and that the tribe’s business ventures have flourished in recent years thanks to its certification by the SBA 8(a) Business Development program.
In the video, posted October 20, 2025, by O’Keefe on X, O’Keefe donned a wig to discuss ATI Government Solutions business practices with an ATI employee, who the company said is no longer working there. The employee said the company does about 20 percent of the work on government contracts it wins and sub-contracts the remainder to others, including large systems integrators.
The lawsuit alleges that O’Keefe “scammed a low-level former employee at ATI (whom he falsely described as senior corporate leadership) into meeting with him under false pretenses and surreptitiously recorded that meeting using a hidden camera.” O’Keefe “baited” the employee to tacitly agree with O’Keefe’s mischaracterization about ATI’s operations and the 8(a) program and then added his own “selective and deceptive commentary,” according to the lawsuit.
“The video is obviously heavily edited; it clips short soundbites of conversation and snapshots of facial expressions, rearranges the clips and audio, and then interweaves the spliced hidden camera content with a direct-to-camera monologue in which O’Keefe tells the story that he hoped to tell in the first place: that ATI was engaged in fraud,” the lawsuit alleged.
ATI Government Solutions in its filing said that such a video would normally go unnoticed by the SBA or other government agencies. But instead, hours after it was published, Loeffler reposted it to her own X account and then announced an investigation that linked it to other government programs rooted in DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The company also alleged that rather than investigating the situation, the SBA the very next day invoked the Federal Acquisition Regulation, or FAR 9.407, which permits suspension of contractors only upon “adequate evidence” of wrongful conduct. ATI Government Solutions alleges that the FAR Suspension Notice was issued without the SBA contacting the company and that an unnamed person at the SBA leaked it to O’Keefe.
The company was suspended from the 8(a) program on October 23, 2025, according to the lawsuit. The SBA issued additional FAR suspensions against six other companies affiliated with ATI Government Solutions CEO Firmadge Crutchfield, who is also a plaintiff in the suit.
“Each of these companies is a subsidiary of one of the Susanville Indian Rancheria Tribe’s SBA-approved tribal holding companies—already known to SBA for years—not some nefarious network of fraudster companies, as Defendant Loeffler portrayed them to be. Any reasonable person with knowledge of SBA’s own program regulations and internal systems or who had exercised due care to read those regulations would understand this form of SBA-approved tribal business structure. Notably, four of the companies had never bid upon or even held a contract, much less been involved in the SBA’s 8(a) Business Development Program,” the company said in the lawsuit.
According to ATI Government Solutions, the SBA has not provided evidence for claiming the company had committed fraud, but on November 19 identified three YouTube videos as the basis for the suspensions, including the O’Keefe video and two others that had not been published yet.
Despite multiple meetings between ATI Government Solutions and the SBA, the SBA has not changed its position. Instead, the company alleged, “Rather than admit its gross mistake, SBA has embarked on an effort to publicly defame ATI, and to use ATI as a scapegoat to justify a broader attack on the SBA’s 8(a) program. The Agency cited the ATI ‘allegations’ as a reason to pursue an audit of the entire 8(a) program and its over 4,000 small business participants, in December 2025, linking to Defendant Loeffler’s social media posts about ATI in a press release in which the Agency boasted that it took ‘immediate action to suspend numerous executives and contractors following allegations of fraud.’”
On October 21, one year after the SBA suspended ATI Government Solutions from government contracts, it extended that suspension another six months under a regulation that says the suspension can be extended if requested by the office of a U.S. assistant attorney general, U.S. attorney, or other responsible prosecuting official requests an extension. However, the company wrote, no such officials have made any requests to the company for information, leaving it to believe the O’Keefe videos are the only basis for the suspension.
ATI Government Solutions alleges that, as a result of the SBA suspension, the company suffered the loss of $130 million from the termination of contracts previously awarded, as well as over $500 million from prospective new business for ATI and its affiliates. The reputations of the company and its affiliated operations and personnel have also suffered, impacting their ability to obtain governmental or non-governmental contracts or future employment, AIT alleged.
As a result of the cancelled contracts, nearly all of its 67 employees have been terminated, the company noted in the lawsuit.
ATI Government Solutions is asking the court to declare the suspensions unlawful, to preliminarily and permanently lift the suspensions, award reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs, and “an award of such other and further relief as this court deems necessary and appropriate.”
