Woman linked to James O’Keefe tried to discredit media with false story Roy Moore impregnated her at 15

A woman who appears to be working with James O’Keefe’s “Project Veritas” tried to peddle a false story about Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore to the Washington Post—and was foiled by reporters in the process.

According to the Post, over a two week period, reporters interviewed Jaime Phillips, who claimed Moore impregnated her as a teenage when she was 15—leading to an abortion. As the Post reports, throughout the interviews the woman pressed reporters on their personal opinions regarding the impact of her bogus allegations, “repeatedly [asking] the reporter to guarantee her that Moore would lose the election if she came forward.”

Reporters for the newspaper saw the woman enter the offices of Project Veritas, the organization led by O’Keefe that sets up undercover sting operations to embarrass left-leaning groups. The organization was responsible for a series of highly-edited videos alleging Planned Parenthood sells fetus parts.

Confronted by the staff of the Washington Post on Monday, O’Keefe declined to answer questions. “I am not doing an interview right now, so I’m not going to say a word,” O’Keefe said.

The Washington Post’s executive editor Martin Baron explained the paper’s rationale for outing Phillips and her relationship to O’Keefe.

“We always honor ‘off-the-record’ agreements when they’re entered into in good faith,” Baron said. “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. Because of our customary journalistic rigor, we weren’t fooled, and we can’t honor an ‘off-the-record’ agreement that was solicited in maliciously bad faith.”

Read the full account of Phillip’s sting attempt at the Washington Post.