Washington Post claims activist tried to embarrass paper with false Moore accusation
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says President Donald Trump is too busy to visit Alabama to campaign for embattled Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore before the Dec. 12th special election. (Nov. 27)
AP
A woman falsely told The Washington Post that she had been sexually abused as a teenager by Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore as part of a coordinated effort by a right-wing group to embarrass the paper, the Post reported Monday.Â
The woman, Jaime T. Phillips, told Post reporters “in a series of interviews over two weeks” that a sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 resulted in her having an abortion at age 15. The paper said it did not publish the story “based on her unsubstantiated account” in which it found inconsistencies.Â
On Monday, reporters from the Post saw Phillips enter the Project Veritas office in New York. Project Veritas is an organization that tries to discredit the news media and liberal groups through undercover “sting” operations. Using video — which is often selectively edited — Project Veritas claims to expose media bias and hidden left-wing agendas.Â
The organization’s techniques have been attacked by critics as deceptive and unethical. Project Veritas’ founder, James O’Keefe, pleaded guilty in 2010 to entering federal property under false pretenses, a misdemeanor, after being arrested in a plan to access former Democratic senator Mary Landrieu’s office.Â
The Post also found a GoFundMe.com page under the name Jaime Phillips for a “relocation to New York for work.”Â
“I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM,” the message from May 29 read, according to a screenshot from the Post. “I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”Â
When asked about the GoFundMe page on Wednesday, Phillips told the Post it was in reference to a job with the Daily Caller that ended up falling through. But Paul Conner, the executive editor of the Daily Caller, said no one there had interviewed anyone named Jaime Phillips.Â
Phillips ended the interview shortly after being asked about the GoFundMe page, which the Post said was taken down by 7 p.m. Wednesday night.Â
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