Newspaper outs fake Moore accuser with conservative ties

The media watchdog group Project Veritas has come under fire after The Washington Post caught a woman affiliated with the group trying to fool reporters with false sexual assault accusations against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama. James O’Keefe, a conservative activist who leads Project Veritas, said in an email to supporters that one of his colleagues “had their cover blown” inside the Post. The newspaper published an account Monday of its dealings with Jaime Phillips, who told reporters that Moore impregnated her as a teenager and talked her into having an abortion. When details of her story didn’t check out, Post reporters dug deeper and linked her to Project Veritas. It’s unclear whether Phillips sought to discredit women who have accused Moore of sexual misconduct, expose anti-Moore bias at the Post, or both. Reporters said Phillips repeatedly asked them to guarantee Moore would lose the election if her story were published, but they said they couldn’t do that. The botched sting has raised the ire of some conservatives who previously supported O’Keefe’s efforts to expose liberal media bias. Ben Shapiro, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, tweeted that despite O’Keefe’s good work in the past, this sting was “horrible, both morally and effectively.”