Veritas Mendacius

A fter numerous women accused Alabama US Senate candidate Roy Moore last fall of sexual misconduct, going back years, some of his defenders claimed it was all a setup. Despite the reports being independent of one another, verification from Moore’s former coworkers, and Moore’s own admissions of creepy behavior, party affiliation was all that mattered to some.

So, it should come as no surprise, that there was an attempt to set up the Washington Post, the newspaper that had brought some of the allegations to light. Jaime Phillips, an operative with the right-wing sting group Project Veritas, contacted the Post with claims that Moore had impregnated her as a teenager and that she’d had an abortion as a result. The problem for Phillips was that the Post does actual journalism, which involves fact-checking. Her story quickly fell apart and it became clear that she was working with the sting group.

That anyone takes Project Veritas seriously anymore is disturbing. Misrepresentation is their modus operandi, not just in their stings, but how they present them to the public.

Their approach was pioneered by the group’s leader, James O’keefe, in 2008. He and a partner conducted stings on Planned Parenthood. Of course, if you talk with workers at hundreds of clinics across the country, the odds are someone may agree to something inappropriate, and they managed to get one of the organization’s employees appear to suggest that they manipulate birth dates to avoid police notification requirements. O’keefe was violating the law by secretly recording, but to his followers, that mattered less than the supposed violations of a group they hated. Later Planned Parenthood stings were deceptively edited to make it seem that they were selling body parts of fetuses.

The next year, O’keefe made bigger news with a series of stings of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy group working in low and moderate income communities. Outside ACORN offices, O’keefe dressed himself and his accomplice as a pimp and prostitute, then filmed inside the offices. In the offices, though viewers did not know this, the two dressed conservatively. The videos were later edited and made to seem that ACORN workers were providing advice on how to violate the law.

Multiple federal and state law enforcement investigations concluded that ACORN had violated no laws, but the damage was done. Congress froze funding for the group and they lost much of their private funding as well. Though O’keefe was forced to settle a six figure lawsuit, he accomplished his goal. ACORN, the most effective voter registration group for the poor in the country, ended up closing down.

In an attempted sting against Louisiana senator Mary Landreau, O’keefe and his three accomplices were charged with a number of felonies, including attempting to damage the phone system. The charges were later reduced, though Project Veritas may be in some trouble in the state of New York for leaving O’keefe’s conviction off his charitable solicitation license. The group has defended itself by attempting to minimize O’keefe’s role in the organization of which he is the best known participant.

Veritas has conducted numerous other stings across the country, many of them failing and/or being exposed. One of the most bizarre involved an attempt to seduce a CNN reporter.

The fact that Project Veritas is listed as a charity is bizarre. They do no real charitable work. While undercover stings are a legitimate tactic for journalists and even some activists, the level of deception in their work is astounding and has led at least some in the media to finally be more skeptical of their claims.

Though the Post is to be commended for checking out the claims of the woman who approached them from Project Veritas, other outlets haven’t been so savvy. Many share and repeat their claims without verification and some, particularly right-wing outlets like Fox News, are complicit in their misleading claims. Andrew Breitbart provided some of O’keefe’s initial funding and after Breitbart’s death, his outlet, under the leadership of Steve Bannon, continues to unabashedly promote O’keefe’s deceptive work.

Much of the funding for Project Veritas comes from the Donors Trust, a secretive right-wing group that promises its donors that their contributions will be kept private. One notable funder is the Trump Foundation, which has contributed at least $10,000.

The word Veritas refers to the goddess of truth in Roman mythology. It would appear that Mendacius, the god of deception, would have been a better choice.

——— Lastly, a correction on last week’s column. I had mentioned that Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison concert was recorded 50 years ago the day my column appeared. It turns out, my source was incorrect, it was recorded on Jan. 13, 1968, not Jan. 10.