Sting backfires
She appears to work for organization that uses deceptive tactics
A woman with ties to a right-wing activist group falsely claims to the Washington Post that Senate candidate Roy Moore had a sexual relationship with her.
A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama, impregnated her as a teenager appears to work with an organization that uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in an effort to embarrass its targets.
In a series of interviews over two weeks, the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15. During the interviews, she repeatedly pressed Post reporters to give their opinions on the effects that her claims could have on Moore’s candidacy if she went public.
The Post did not publish an article based on her unsubstantiated account. When Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her story and an internet posting that raised doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not working with any organization that targets journalists.
But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias.
James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas who was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2010 for using a fake identity to enter a federal building during a previous sting, declined to answer questions about the woman outside the Project Veritas office, a storefront in Mamaroneck, N.Y., on Monday morning shortly after the woman walked inside.
“I am not doing an interview right now, so I’m not going to say a word,” O’Keefe said.
Cryptic messages
In a follow-up interview, O’Keefe declined to answer repeated questions about whether the woman was employed at Project Veritas. He also did not respond when asked if he was working with Moore, former White House adviser Stephen Bannon or Republican strategists.
A spokesman for Moore’s campaign did not immediately respond to a message for comment.
The woman who approached Post reporters, Jaime T. Phillips, did not respond to calls to her cellphone Monday morning. Her car remained in the Project Veritas parking lot for more than an hour.
After Phillips was seen entering the Project Veritas office, the Post made the unusual decision to report her previous off-therecord comments.
“We always honor ‘off-therecord’ agreements when they’re entered into in good faith,” said Martin Baron, the Post’s executive editor. “But this so-called off-the-record conversation was the essence of a scheme to deceive and embarrass us. The intent by Project Veritas clearly was to publicize the conversation if we fell for the trap.”
On Nov. 9, the Post published an article that included allegations that Moore once initiated a sexual encounter with a 14-yearold named Leigh Corfman.
Post reporter Beth Reinhard, who co-wrote the article about Corfman, received a cryptic email early the next morning.
“Roy Moore in Alabama … I might know something but I need to keep myself safe. How do we do this?” the apparent tipster wrote under an account with the name “Lindsay James.”
The email’s subject line was “Roy Moore in AL.”
Reinhard sent an email asking if the person was willing to talk off the record.
“Not sure if I trust the phone,” came the reply. “Can we just stick to email?”
“I need to be confident that you can protect me before I will tell all,” the person wrote in a subsequent email. “I have stuff I’ve been hiding for a long time but maybe it should stay that way.”
In the days that followed the purported tipster’s initial emails, Reinhard communicated with the woman through an encrypted text messaging service and spoke by phone with the person to set up a meeting. When the woman suggested a meeting in New York, Reinhard told her she would have to know more about her background. The woman offered that her real name was Jaime Phillips.
Phillips said she lived in New York but would be in the Washington, D.C., area during Thanksgiving week and suggested meeting Tuesday in a shopping mall in Tysons, Va. During that initial meeting, Phillips repeatedly asked Reinhard to guarantee her that Moore would lose the election if she came forward.
Combating lies?
Back at the newsroom, Reinhard became concerned about elements of Phillips’ story. Phillips had said she lived in Alabama only for a summer while a teenager; but the cellphone number Phillips provided had an Alabama area code.
Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was looking into Phillips’ background, found the document that strongly reinforced the reporters’ suspicions: a webpage for a fundraising campaign by someone with the same name. It was on the website GoFundMe. com under the name Jaime Phillips.
“I’m moving to New York!” the May 29 appeal said. “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”
In a March posting on its Facebook page, Project Veritas said it was seeking 12 new “undercover reporters,” though the organization’s operatives use methods that are eschewed by mainstream journalists, such as misrepresenting themselves.
A posting for the “journalist” job on the Project Veritas website that month warned that the job “is not a role for the faint of heart.”
On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, she suggested meeting with another Post reporter, Stephanie McCrummen, who co-wrote the initial article about Corfman. At that meeting, McCrummen asked her about the GoFundMe page and Project Veritas.
“OK,” Phillips said. “Um, yeah, I was looking to take a job last summer in New York, but it fell through . ... Yeah, it was going to be with the Daily Caller, but it ended up falling through, so I wasn’t able to do it.”
When asked who at the Daily Caller interviewed her, Phillips said, “Kathy,” pausing before adding the last name, “Johnson.”
Paul Conner, executive editor of the Daily Caller, said Monday that no one with the name Kathy Johnson works for the publication.
At the Wednesday meeting, Phillips also told the Post that she had not been in contact with the Moore campaign. As the interview ended, Phillips told McCrummen she was not recording the conversation.
“I think I probably just want to cancel and not go through with it at this point,” Phillips said shortly before ending the interview.
By 7 p.m. the message on the GoFundMe page was gone, replaced by a new one.
“Campaign is complete and no longer active,” it read.