James O'Keefe in his glory days/mug shot

Poor ol' James O'Keefe III, the greatest fake journalist since himself, has shat the Undercover Journamalism bed with another failed sting. Monday, the Washington Post reported it had caught O'Keefe's Project Veritas (Latin for "I don't journalism very good") trying to peddle a fake Roy Moore accuser. The sting didn't go so well, largely because the people James O'Keefe III hires as "undercover journalists" are every bit as stupid as he is.

In this latest installment of James O'Keefe III Publicly Wets Himself, the Post was contacted by Project Verbiage's undercover dullard, Jaime Phillips, the morning after the paper broke its story about Moore's alleged molestation of a 14-year-old girl in 1979. Phillips emailed one of the reporters on the story, Beth Reinhard, to say "Roy Moore in Alabama ... I might know something but I need to keep myself safe. How do we do this?" In a nod to creating a backstory, Phillips used a fake name with an email address that included "rolltide," so if that didn't prove she was from Alabama, what would?

BREAKING: Stupidest Man On Internet DESTROYS Roy Moore Pedo Claims With Some Rando's Tweets Who needs investigative reporting when you can find some random guy on Twitter to take down the Lamestream Media?

All this fakery was unspooling while the wingnuttosphere went nuts over the Stupidest Man on the Internet's boffo story citing a fraudulent email claim that some WaPo reporter named "Beth" was trying to pay women to make false harassment claims against Roy Moore. And here was a fake source being paid to try to dangle a fake story before WaPo, to prove that WaPo will publish any old lies. That didn't work out so good!

After some back and forth in which Phillips wouldn't agree to talk over the phone and insisted that she contact Reinhard only by email, Phillips agreed to meet Reinhard in person, in a shopping mall near DC. And no, the poor dear didn't want any other WaPo reporters coming along. But what an astonishing story Phillips had to tell:

The 41-year-old said she had been abused as a child, Reinhard said. Her family had moved often. She said she moved in with an aunt in the Talladega area of Alabama and started attending a church youth group when she met Moore in 1992, the year he became a county judge. She said she was 15. She said they started a “secret” sexual relationship. “I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t care,” she said. She said that she got pregnant, that Moore talked her into an abortion, and that he drove her to Mississippi to get it. In the interview, she told Reinhard that she was so upset she couldn’t finish her salad.

Phillips also pressed Reinhard to guarantee to her that Roy Moore would lose his Senate election if she came forward, exactly as any typical victim of statutory rape might. But instead of promising that the Washington Post would do its very best to slant the news and destroy a good Bible-believing Christian, Reinhard started doing journalism at Phillips, even though she had such a juicy story! She texted Phillips to say she couldn't predict how any possible story would affect an election in December, and even told Phillips that her claims would need to be checked, and asked for documents that might back up her story, as if reporters really do that.

Phillips had a sad, texting Reinhard to say she'd felt "anxiety & negative energy after our meeting," and then on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, asked if she could meet with one of the other reporters who worked on the earlier story, Stephanie McCrummen, because "I’d rather go to another paper than talk to you again." That must have been some seriously negative energy.

Meanwhile, Reinhard was checking elements of Phillips's story, and they weren't adding up. The lending company where she said she worked had no record of a Jaime Phillips working there. And although Phillips said she'd only lived in Alabama the one summer when Roy Moore supposedly romanced her, the cellphone she'd been texting Reinhard with had an Alabama area code. Note to Project Ferret Ass operatives: Keep your fake story consistent! Don't go to the bother of getting a burner phone with an Alabama area code if you also say you were only there in 1992 making babies.

Oh, and then there was the GoFundMe account another WaPo researcher found, in the name of a Jaime Phillips who wanted to crowdfund her crusade to move from Georgia to New York and "work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt [sic] of the liberal MSM." The fundraiser was later removed, but WaPo reporters know all about the Internet Archive:

WaPo takes some pains to show off its fact-checking, noting that while Jaime Phillips is a common enough name, one of the two (2) donations to the fundraiser (which only raised $250 of its $2,000 goal, SAD) "was from a person whose name matched her daughter’s, according to public records." So what the hell, they sent McCrummen out to meet with Phillips, and McCrummen brought along a printout of the GoFundMe and some WaPo videographers to catch the fun on tape. Check out Phillips's Spy Skillz:

Phillips had arrived early and was waiting for McCrummen, her purse resting on the table. When McCrummen put her purse near Phillips’s purse to block a possible camera, Phillips moved hers. The Post videographers sat separately, unnoticed, at an adjacent table.

Phillips wasn't interested in repeating any of her story about Roy Moore this time; she wanted to get to the good stuff so Project Vanitas could show how biased WaPo is. She asked McCrummen to guarantee that any Post article about her would lead to Moore's destruction, but instead of saying "Oh, yes, we cultural Marxists of the Mainstream Media just adore the politics of personal destruction," McCrummen insisted on asking Phillips questions about her Moore story, which spoiled all the fun.

Once McCrummen started pointing out her bogus job claim and the GoFundMe appeal, Phillips seemed considerably less interested in telling all about Roy Moore, or anything else, and the poor victim of fact-checking didn't want to answer any more questions. Enjoy the recording; the videographers come in a bit later, around the 13-minute mark, and shortly after, Phillips starts chickening out on her undercover journalisming:

Phillips left the interview, and then Monday morning, clever WaPo reporters saw her go right into the Project Very Dross office in New York, where she stayed for over an hour. James O'Keefe wasn't interested in answering any questions about whether she worked there, either. And once Phillips headed into the office, WaPo management decided that even though Phillips had insisted on being off the record, screw it, she was lying from the get-go. Best graf of the whole piece:

“We always honor ‘off-the-record’ agreements when they’re entered into in good faith,” said Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor. “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.”

Once the Post story went live, James O'Keefe got busy trying to spin the story on the Twitter box, insisting WaPo was just trying to attack him because he had a powerhouse takedown of the paper on the way. Any screaming you heard wasn't James O'Keefe stepping on his dick, it was the MSM, in MORTAL FEAR:

Was O'Keefe trying to do some last-minute damage control after his sting got stung? Heck no! The Washington Post was simply so scared it was something something word salad TERRIFIED:

Finally, O'Keefe scraped together this wet fart of a SHOCKING VIDEO in which WaPo national security correspondent Dan Lamothe is seen admitting not much of anything shocking at all, like that there's often a lot of hullaballoo when Trump tweets something stupid, and that the editorial side of the newspaper is a lot more opinionated than the news side. Prepare to be shocked!

Lamothe tweeted that the video appears to be from months ago, and that the Project Hairysocks "operatives" had pretended to be "seemingly interested recent grads/students [who] asked for my sense of things. I gave it." No apologies, because there was nothing to apologize for, and he's pleased to work at a paper "that tries to call bulls!#/$ on bulls!^*," as he delicately put it.

On the whole, it wasn't a great outing for Project Berryfloss, which inadvertently gave the Washington Post a chance to demonstrate how it vets would-be anonymous sources and exposed O'Keefe's pet project for the lie factory that it is. The episode also gave real reporter David Fahrenthold a chance to remind us that O'Keefe was the recipient of a $10,000 donation from Donald Trump's bogus foundation in 2015:

The Daily Beast's Lachlan Markay presciently noted yesterday morning -- before the Post's story, so ask him for his lottery numbers -- that Project Vermicide's 2016 tax returns show the group brought in a lot more money than in 2015, and that O'Keefe gave himself a nice raise last year -- from $240k in 2015 to $317K in 2016. Yes, James O'Keefe pays himself a third of a million bucks for his fine work, or six times more than anyone on staff at Wonkette, and frankly, now we're mad. Also, Markay pointed out O'Keefe had "initially neglected to inform state charity regulators in three states of his criminal conviction" for attempting to infiltrate Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in 2010. Oops!

But a grifter's gotta grift, and before long, O'Keefe was proclaiming victory and, as Philly.com columnist Will Bunch discovered, fundraising off his idiot "reporter" getting caught by the Post:

James O'Keefe Steps On Own Dick, Declares Flawless Victory Over George Soros James O'Keefe, the master of fake scandals, has an exciting new failed investigation into what he claims are billionaire George Soros's efforts to undermine democracy. No evidence at all, but some very shocking accusations!

We bet O'Keefe will give himself a tidy bonus for this latest achievement, clearly his best work since that time he left a phone line open after leaving a message and gave away his scam, and everybody at Project Velcro had a beer and congratulated themselves last night. Of course, the women would have wanted to keep a careful eye on their drinks.

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[WaPo / Dan Lamothe on Twitter / Lachlan Markay on Twitter]