March 29, 2024

Project Veritas Busted, Far-Right Pundits Still Defending Them



By Jared Holt / 11.28.2017

After reporters at The Washington Post unmasked yet another botched undercover sting operation headed by James O’Keefe’s organization Project Veritas, right-wing pundits put their eagerness to undermine mainstream media outlets above all else and took to providing cover for O’Keefe and his organization.

Yesterday, the Washington Post revealed that a Project Veritas operative had attempted to dupe reporters with a false story claiming that Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore impregnated her as a teenager. After reporters found inconsistencies in the operative’s stories and spotted her entering the Project Veritas headquarters, they connected the false account to O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s prior faceplants include being exposed attempting to lure a CNN reporter onto a boat full of dildos to then record the reporter and humiliate her, sabotaging his own attempt to dupe the Open Society Foundations and failing to entrap Hillary Clinton supporters into doing anything more scandalous than selling campaign merch to a Canadian.

But that didn’t stop the most ardent anti-mainstream media pundits from defending O’Keefe’s operation.

Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump sycophant with his own history of botched smear campaigns, rushed to Project Veritas’ defense by wondering whether the Washington Post was “supplied with a list of the original accusers” of Moore and questioning why the paper was supposedly “quiet about” right-wing claims that attorney Gloria Allred helped women fabricate claims that Moore made sexual advances on them as teenagers:

Mike Cernovich, a right-wing blogger who notably pushed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory and also frequently attempts to undermine establishment media outlets, claimed the story proved a “win-win” for both the Washington Post and Project Veritas:

Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who once worked for Project Veritas, lashed out at The Hill reporter Will Sommer for posting a thread detailing O’Keefe’s past flops as a self-described investigative reporter. Loomer described O’Keefe as “an American Hero” and called Sommer a “Soy Boy,” a nod to a bizarre alt-right meme based in the fictitious idea that consuming soy products will somehow “feminize” men:

Right Wing News’ John Hawkins congratulated Project Veritas and urged the organization to “keep on doing what they’re doing”:

Infowars writer Kelen McBreen claimed that Project Veritas exposed “anti-Trump bias at the Washington Post”:

Breitbart News editor-at-large Joel B. Pollak went so far as to claim that Project Veritas and The Washington Post had “busted” each other:

But perhaps the most ridiculous spin came from Project Veritas’ official Twitter account, which speculated that Twitter may “fix,” or remove their organization from, the trending bar after it releases its smear videos on the Washington Post: