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Conservative provocateur and Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe holds a news conference at the National Press Club September 1, 2015 in Washington, DC.
- A woman approached The Washington Post claiming to have had a sexual relationship with Roy Moore, the embattled Republican Alabama Senate nominee whose campaign has been roiled by multiple allegations of sexual harassment.
- During interviews, the woman insisted on getting a guarantee that Moore would lose the special election if The Post reported her story.
- The Post conducted an extensive background check and investigation, during which her claims were debunked.
A woman who posed as a victim of Roy Moore, the embattled Republican Alabama Senate candidate whose campaign has been roiled by multiple allegations of sexual harassment, appeared to be involved in a sting operation meant to disgrace The Washington Post, the newspaper reported Monday.
During a two-week period, the woman, who said her name was Jaime Phillips, reportedly contacted two of The Post's reporters shortly after the newspaper broker the initial story on the sexual harassment allegations against Moore. Her account went beyond The Post's original report, and alleged that in 1992, she had a "secret" sexual relationship with Moore and became pregnant when she was 15.
"I knew it wasn't right, but I didn't care," Phillips reportedly told The Post's reporters during an interview.
Phillips reportedly asked for a guarantee that Moore would lose the special election if she told her account.
"So my whole things is, like, I want him to be completely taken out of the race ..." Phillips reportedly said to The Post. "And I really expected that was going to happen, and now it's not. So, I don't know what you think about that."
Beth Reinhard, one of the reporters who interviewed Phillips, said in a text message that "she could not predict what the impact would be," according to The Post.
Phillips then alleged in a text message that she felt "anxiety & negative energy" after a meeting with Reinhard, and eventually reached out to Stephanie McCrummen, another Post reporter.
"I'd rather go to another paper than talk to you again," Phillips said to Reinhard, according to The Post.
Suspicions arose after a Post researcher discovered that a GoFundMe.com fundraiser from someone Jaime Phillips was soliciting donations to fund a move to New York, ostensibly to a "work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceit of the liberal [mainstream media]."
"Um, yeah, I was looking to take a job last summer in New York, but it fell through," Phillips said after she was confronted with details on the GoFundMe.com page. "Yeah, it was going to be with the Daily Caller, but it ended up falling through, so I wasn't able to do it."
Representatives from the Daily Caller denied having interviewed anyone named Jaime Phillips, The Post reported.
"I think I probably just want to cancel and not go through with it at this point," Phillips said to McCrummen. "I'm not going to answer any more questions."
Martin Baron, The Post's executive editor, made the decision to publish Phillips' comments, which were previously off-the-record.
"We always honor 'off-the-record' agreements when they're entered into in good faith," Baron said in The Post. "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," Baron said.
On Monday afternoon, James O'Keefe, Project Veritas' founder, defended the group by launching a series of attacks against The Post.
"Hitting export on hidden camera footage into Washington Post shortly," O'Keefe wrote on Twitter. "Project Veritas vs Bezos 100mm monopoly. Fasten your seat belts."