Conservative activist and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said Wednesday that the group’s headquarters in New York had been vandalized with graffiti reading “fake news HQ” after the group was accused of trying to plant false stories in The Washington Post in order to undermine the paper’s credibility.
A photo posted by O’Keefe on Twitter shows him standing next to the organization’s building with the message scrawled in silver or black spray paint.
“Suddenly social media is turning on our Geotags mysteriously, and this morning our building was vandalized,” O’Keefe wrote on Twitter, adding: “To the vandalizers, don’t bother coming back. Our cameras already recorded you and we handed to the police.”
The Washington Post accused Project Veritas this week of hiring a woman to falsely claim that she was impregnated and pressured into an abortion by GOP Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore when she was a teenager.
Moore was the subject of an explosive Washington Post investigation earlier this month that revealed accusations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls.
{mosads}In a series of interviews, the woman suspected to be hired by Project Veritas told the Post that she had a sexual relationship with Moore in 1992, became pregnant and had an abortion at Moore’s urging when she was 15.
The Post published a story earlier this week about the episode, detailing how the paper figured out it was the target of a sting operation and that the woman was not telling the truth.
The Washington Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, said that the paper wasn’t fooled due to the “journalistic rigor” that goes into all of its reporting.
“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,” Baron said. “The intent by Project Veritas clearly was to publicize the conversation if we fell for the trap.”
O’Keefe appeared to acknowledge the woman’s role with Project Veritas in a fundraising email.
“Following months of undercover work within The Washington Post, our investigative journalist within the publication had their cover blown,” O’Keefe wrote.
“This is how undercover work goes. This isn’t the first time that has happened, and it won’t be the last time.”