Can An Iphone Record A Phone Conversation +picture
Reporter Stephanie McCrummen of The Washington Post interviews Jaime Phillips at a Greek restaurant in Alexandria on Wednesday. (Dalton Bennett,Thomas LeGro/The Washington Post)
A woman who falsely claimed to The Washington Post that Roy Moore, the Republican U.S. Senate appellant in Alabama, abounding her as a jailbait appears to assignment with an alignment that uses ambiguous approach to secretly almanac conversations in an accomplishment to abash its targets.
In a alternation of interviews over two weeks, the woman aggregate a affecting adventure about an declared animal accord with Moore in 1992 that led to an aborticide back she was 15. During the interviews, she afresh apprenticed Post reporters to accord their opinions on the furnishings that her claims could accept on Moore’s antagonism if she went public.
The Post did not broadcast an commodity based on her counterfeit account. Back Post reporters confronted her with inconsistencies in her adventure and an Internet announcement that aloft doubts about her motivations, she insisted that she was not alive with any alignment that targets journalists.
But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an alignment that targets the boilerplate annual media and left-leaning groups. The alignment sets up undercover “stings” that absorb application apocryphal awning belief and buried video recordings meant to betrayal what the accumulation says is media bias.
James O’Keefe, the architect of Project Veritas who was bedevilled of a abomination in 2010 for application a affected character to admission a federal architecture during a antecedent sting, beneath to acknowledgment questions about the woman alfresco the Project Veritas office, a storefront in Mamaroneck, N.Y., on Monday morning anon afterwards the woman absolved inside.
“I am not accomplishing an annual appropriate now, so I’m not activity to say a word,” O’Keefe said.
James O’Keefe, the architect of Project Veritas, beneath to acknowledgment questions from The Post. (Aaron Davis/The Washington Post)
In a aftereffect interview, O’Keefe beneath to acknowledgment afresh questions about whether the woman was alive at Project Veritas. He additionally did not acknowledge back asked if he was alive with Moore, above White House adviser and Moore adherent Stephen K. Bannon, or Republican strategists.
The group’s efforts allegorize the lengths to which activists accept gone to try to discredit media outlets for advertisement on allegations from assorted women that Moore pursued them back they were teenagers and he was in his aboriginal 30s. Moore has denied that he did annihilation improper.
A agent for Moore’s attack did not anon acknowledge to a bulletin for comment.
The woman who approached Post reporters, Jaime T. Phillips, did not acknowledge to calls to her cellphone Monday morning. Her car remained in the Project Veritas parking lot for added than an hour.
After Phillips was empiric entering the Project Veritas office, The Post fabricated the abnormal accommodation to abode her antecedent off-the-record comments.
“We consistently annual ‘off-the-record’ agreements back they’re entered into in acceptable faith,” said Martin Baron, The Post’s controlling editor. “But this alleged off-the-record chat was the aspect of a arrangement to deceive and abash us. The absorbed by Project Veritas acutely was to advance the chat if we fell for the trap. Because of our accustomed journalistic rigor, we weren’t fooled, and we can’t annual an ‘off-the-record’ acceding that was solicited in maliciously bad faith.”
Phillips’s accession at the Project Veritas arrangement capped a weeks-long accomplishment that began alone hours afterwards The Post appear an commodity on Nov. 9 that included allegations that Moore already accomplished a animal arrangement with a 14-year-old alleged Leigh Corfman.
Post anchorman Beth Reinhard, who co-wrote the commodity about Corfman, accustomed a cryptic email aboriginal the abutting morning.
“Roy Moore in Alabama . . . I ability apperceive commodity but I charge to accumulate myself safe. How do we do this?” the credible adviser wrote beneath an annual with the name “Lindsay James.”
The email’s accountable band was “Roy Moore in AL.” The sender’s email abode included “rolltide,” the ambulatory cry of the University of Alabama’s sports teams, which are nicknamed the Crimson Tide.
Reinhard beatific an email allurement if the actuality was accommodating to allocution off the record.
“Not abiding if I assurance the phone,” came the reply. “Can we aloof stick to email?”
“I charge to be assured that you can assure me afore I will acquaint all,” the actuality wrote in a consecutive email. “I accept actuality I’ve been ambuscade for a continued time but maybe it should breach that way.”
The tipster’s email came amidst counterattacks by Moore supporters aimed at The Post and its reporters.
That aforementioned day, Gateway Pundit, a bourgeois site, advance a apocryphal adventure from a Twitter account, @umpire43, that said, “A ancestors acquaintance in Alabama aloof told my wife that a WAPO anchorman alleged Beth action her 1000$ to allege Roy Moore.” The Twitter account, which has a history of overextension misinformation, has back been deleted.
The Post, like abounding added annual organizations, has a austere action adjoin advantageous bodies for advice and did not do so in its advantage of Moore.
On Nov. 14, a pastor in Alabama said he accustomed a articulation mail from a man falsely claiming to be a Post reporter and gluttonous women “willing to accomplish damaging remarks” about Moore for money. No one associated with The Post fabricated any such call.
In the canicule that followed the declared tipster’s antecedent emails, Reinhard announced with the woman through an encrypted argument messaging account and batten by buzz with the actuality to set up a meeting. Back the woman appropriate a affair in New York, Reinhard told her she would accept to apperceive added about her adventure and her background. The woman offered that her absolute name was Jaime Phillips.
Phillips said she lived in New York but would be in the D.C. breadth during Thanksgiving anniversary and appropriate affair Tuesday in a arcade capital in Tysons Corner, Va. “I’m planning to do some arcade there so I’ll acquisition a acceptable abode to accommodated afore you get there,” Phillips wrote in a bulletin beatific via Signal, the encrypted messaging service.
When Reinhard appropriate bringing accession reporter, Phillips wrote, “I’m not absolutely adequate with anyone abroad actuality there this time.”
Reinhard accustomed to acquisition Phillips, cutting a amber covering anorak and with continued red hair, already built-in in a berth in the restaurant.
The 41-year-old said she had been abused as a child, Reinhard said. Her ancestors had confused often. She said she confused in with an aunt in the Talladega breadth of Alabama and started accessory a abbey adolescence accumulation back she met Moore in 1992, the year he became a canton judge. She said she was 15. She said they started a “secret” animal 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 collection her to Mississippi to get it.
In the interview, she told Reinhard that she was so agitated she couldn’t accomplishment her salad.
Phillips said she had started cerebration about advancing advanced afterwards the allegations about Hollywood blur ambassador Harvey Weinstein surfaced. Again she said she saw the annual about Moore aflame beyond the television awning while in a breach allowance at her job at a aggregation alleged NFM Lending in Westchester County, N.Y., Reinhard said.
Phillips additionally afresh asked the anchorman to agreement her that Moore would lose the acclamation if she came forward. Reinhard told her in a consecutive argument bulletin that she could not adumbrate what the appulse would be. Reinhard said she additionally explained to Phillips that her claims would accept to be fact-checked. Additionally, Reinhard asked her for abstracts that would approve or abutment her story.
Later that day, Phillips told Reinhard that she acquainted “anxiety & abrogating activity afterwards our meeting,” argument letters show. “You aloof didn’t argue me that I should appear forward,” she wrote.
Reinhard replied, “I’m so apologetic but I appetite to be beeline with you about the fact-checking action and the actuality that we can’t agreement what will appear as a aftereffect of accession story.”
Phillips was not satisfied. On Wednesday, the day afore Thanksgiving, she appropriate affair with accession Post reporter, Stephanie McCrummen, who co-wrote the antecedent commodity about Corfman. “I’d rather go to accession cardboard than allocution to you again,” Phillips told Reinhard.
Back at the newsroom, Reinhard became anxious about elements of Phillips’s story. Phillips had said she lived in Alabama alone for a summer while a teenager; but the cellphone cardinal Phillips provided had an Alabama breadth code. Reinhard alleged NFM Lending in Westchester County, but they said a actuality alleged Jaime Phillips did not assignment there.
Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was attractive into Phillips’s background, begin the certificate that acerb able the reporters’ suspicions: a Web folio for a fundraising attack by accession with the aforementioned name. It was on the website GoFundMe.com beneath the name Jaime Phillips.
“I’m affective to New York!” the May 29 address said. “I’ve accustomed a job to assignment in the bourgeois media movement to action the lies and deceipt of the advanced MSM. I’ll be application my abilities as a researcher and fact-checker to advice our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came beyond the befalling to change my career path.”
In a March announcement on its Facebook page, Project Veritas said it was gluttonous 12 new “undercover reporters,” admitting the organization’s agents use methods that are eschewed by boilerplate journalists, such as misrepresenting themselves.
A announcement for the “journalist” job on the Project Veritas website that ages warned that the job “is not a role for the aside of heart.”
The job’s listed goal: “To accept an alias persona, accretion admission to an articular actuality of absorption and actuate that actuality to acknowledge information.”
It additionally listed tasks that the job appellant should be able to master, including: “Learning a script,” “Preparing a accomplishments adventure to abutment your role,” “Gaining an arrangement or admission to the ambition of the investigation,” and “Operating buried recording equipment.”
Project Veritas, founded in 2010, is a tax-exempt alms that says its mission is to “investigate and betrayal corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, artifice and added misconduct.” It aloft $4.8 million and alive 38 bodies in 2016, according to its accessible tax filing. It additionally had 92 volunteers.
O’Keefe’s bent almanac has acquired the alms problems in some states. Mississippi and Utah bare the accumulation of a authorization to accession money in those states because it bootless to acknowledge O’Keefe’s confidence on accompaniment applications, annal show.
Also alive at Veritas is above television ambassador Robert J. Halderman, who was bedevilled to six months in bastille in 2010 afterwards he was accused of aggravating to bribery late-night host David Letterman. Halderman was with O’Keefe alfresco the Project Veritas offices Monday as a anchorman approved to ask about Phillips’s role with the organization.
Because Jaime Phillips is a almost accepted name, it wasn’t a authoritativeness that the GoFundMe folio that Crites begin was created by was the aforementioned woman who approached The Post. But there was accession cogent detail, in accession to the name. One of two donations listed on the folio was from a actuality whose name that akin her daughter’s, according to accessible records.
McCrummen agreed to accommodated Phillips that afternoon.
Phillips appropriate affair about in Alexandria, Va., adage she was arcade in the area. Post videographers accompanied McCrummen, who brought a printout of the fundraising folio to the interview.
Again, Phillips had accustomed aboriginal and was cat-and-mouse for McCrummen, her purse comatose on the table. Back McCrummen put her purse abreast Phillips’s purse to block a accessible camera, Phillips confused hers.
The Post videographers sat separately, unnoticed, at an adjoining table.
Phillips said she didn’t appetite to get into the capacity of what she had said happened amid her and Moore.
She said she capital McCrummen to assure her that the commodity would aftereffect in Moore’s defeat, according to a recording. McCrummen instead asked her about her adventure apropos Moore.
Phillips complained that President Trump had accustomed Moore.
“So my accomplished affair is, like, I appetite him to be absolutely taken out of the chase . . . ” she said. “And I absolutely accepted that was activity to happen, and now it’s not. So, I don’t apperceive what you anticipate about that.”
McCrummen asked Phillips to verify her character with a photo identification. Phillips provided a Georgia driver’s license.
McCrummen again asked her about the GoFundMe page.
“We accept a action of accomplishing background, blockage backgrounds and this affectionate of thing, so I capital to ask you about one thing,” McCrummen said, affairs out a archetype of the folio and account from it. “So I aloof capital to ask you if you could explain this, and I additionally capital to let you know, Jaime, that this is actuality recorded and video recorded.”
“Okay,” Phillips said. “Um, yeah, I was attractive to booty a job aftermost summer in New York, but it fell through,” Phillips said. “Yeah, it was activity to be with the Daily Caller, but it concluded up falling through, so I wasn’t able to do it.”
When asked who at the Daily Caller interviewed her, Phillips said, “Kathy,” pausing afore abacus the aftermost name, “Johnson.”
Paul Conner, controlling editor of the Daily Caller, said Monday that no one with the name Kathy Johnson works for the advertisement and that he has no almanac of accepting alone interviewed Phillips. Conner after said in email that he had asked added top editors at the Daily Caller and the affiliated Daily Caller Annual Foundation about Phillips.
“None of us has interviewed a woman by the name Jaime Phillips,” Conner wrote.
At the Alexandria restaurant on Wednesday, Phillips additionally told The Post that she had not been in acquaintance with the Moore campaign. As the annual ended, Phillips told McCrummen she was not recording the conversation.
“I anticipate I apparently aloof appetite to abolish and not go through with it at this point,” Phillips said at Souvlaki Bar anon afore catastrophe the interview.
“I’m not activity to acknowledgment any added questions,” she said. “I anticipate I’m aloof activity to go.”
She best up her covering and bag, alternate her alcohol to the advanced adverse and larboard the restaurant.
By 7 p.m. the bulletin on the GoFundMe folio was gone, replaced by a new one.
“Campaign is complete and no best active,” it read.
Thomas LeGro and Dalton Bennett contributed to this report.
