Quite a score for Project Veritas. The difficulty in creating an effective sting video, I’d guess, is that the prominence of the target and their willingness to speak candidly to strangers are usually inversely proportional. A minor bureaucrat might be willing to chatter about what he knows of voter fraud, but you know what the spin will be afterward — “he’s a nobody, he knows nothing, he was talking out of his ass to impress someone who seemed interested in his work.” Alan Schulkin’s not a nobody. New York City has only 10 commissioners on the Board of Elections, two from each borough. He’s the Democratic commissioner from Manhattan. He knows what he’s talking about, and he’s confirming every right-wing suspicion about voter fraud. Yes, voters get bused around to vote multiple times (by local pols, he implies); yes, of course it’s irresponsible not to require something as simple as a state-issued ID to vote; yes, even some voters who do have IDs are suspect because the state doesn’t rigorously demand proof of identity when applying for the ID card. The guy goes so far as to admit that Democratic corruption on voting has made him question his party affiliation.

O’Keefe showed impressive restraint in holding the clip as long as he did. He says it was recorded last December; it’s being released now, obviously, for maximum electoral effect. (And I’d guess there’s more to come.) I don’t know whether voters will punish Clinton for it but it’s rocket fuel for Trump’s argument if he loses that the election was rigged all along. The minority angle jibes perfectly with his campaign message too. Just last night he warned an audience in Pennsylvania about “other communities” cheating. He’ll inevitably run an ad based on this clip and, just as inevitably, the left will attack him viciously for “demagoguery” and insist that voter fraud is negligible, focused on local elections, yadda yadda. I wonder, if the clip had dropped a few months back, whether Congress would have held hearings over it. As it is, New York City’s going to have to do something.

Exit question: Schulkin’s going to say, because he has no other defense, that the bits here were taken out of context. Er, how? He’s plain as can be.