That darkness democracy dies in? Project ‘Veritas’ is what it looks like

It’s called Project Veritas. The latter word, of course, is Latin for “truth.”

Project “Truth” does stuff you’d be hard pressed to make up, except that’s exactly what they do. They make stuff up. (Founder James O’Keefe was convicted in 2010 of using a false identity to enter a federal building. Its stings to expose media bias involve bogus identities and cover stories. Ironic hypocrisy would not appear to be on PV’s ethical radar.)

In its ever-vigilant quest to embarrass a media organization responsible for what President Donald Trump (who in 2015 gave $10,000 to Project Veritas) delights in calling “fake news,” Project Veritas set up the Washington Post … by creating fake news.

A woman emailed Post reporter Beth Reinhard shortly after the first stories appeared about Alabama Judge Roy Moore’s alleged sexual approaches to teenage girls. “Roy Moore in Alabama,” the email read … “I might know something but I need to keep myself safe. How do we do this?” In a series of interviews, the woman claimed to have been impregnated by Moore, who she said coerced her into an abortion in 1992 when she was 15.

It didn’t take long for the Post to figure out this whole thing reeked like Southern summer roadkill.

The woman reportedly kept pressuring Reinhard to assure her the story would take down Moore’s candidacy for U.S. Senate, to which the reporter responded that it required documentation and would have to be fact-checked. She claimed to have lived in Alabama only during the summer of her liaison with Moore, but her email address included “rolltide” and her cell phone had an Alabama area code.

The same day as the woman’s first email to Reinhard, right-wing website Gateway Pundit published a tweet from @umpire43: “A family friend in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offer her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore.” A reporter’s call to the woman’s claimed place of employment in Westchester County, N.Y. revealed that she was not and had never been employed there.

And on Monday morning, Post video reporters recorded the woman entering the Project Veritas offices in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where she stayed for an hour.

O’Keefe refused to say whether the woman, identified as Jaime Phillips, works for Project Veritas. “He also did not respond when asked if he was working with Moore, former White House adviser and Moore supporter Stephen K. Bannon, or Republican strategists,” the Post reported.

On a not altogether unrelated note, one of PV’s “exposes” reportedly includes a Post reporter discussing the origin of the newspaper’s familiar “Democracy Dies in Darkness” trademark. Maybe there’s something sinister in that. What should be self-evident is the smug moral darkness in which an outfit like Project “Veritas” operates.

The only thing more striking than the sheer sliminess of this “truth” project is its hilarious ineptitude. Maybe O’Keefe should go to Acme.com and order the Wile E. Coyote boulder catapult. That might work.

This story was originally published November 28, 2017 at 3:30 PM with the headline "That darkness democracy dies in? Project ‘Veritas’ is what it looks like."