“The infiltration of our office felt like a very deep wound,” she said.
In response, she created Project Veritas Exposed, a website that uploads pictures and dossiers of individuals purported to have worked undercover for Mr. O’Keefe. In 2018, the campaign of Abigail Spanberger, now a Virginia congresswoman, fired a volunteer after finding her on Project Veritas Exposed and confronting her.
More recently, Ms. Windsor provided a document to reporters at The New York Times about a planned operation in 2018 involving Project Veritas operatives. Further reporting revealed that the operation was aimed at H.R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, who had fallen out of favor with Trump supporters. (Project Veritas has sued The Times for libel over a separate matter.)
Ms. Windsor rejected any notion that her undercover work was a form of revenge after the infiltration of her mentors’ company in 2016.
“In terms of the undercover work I’m presently doing, it has nothing to do with O’Keefe and everything to do with the fact that extremist right-wingers are trying to overthrow our democracy,” she said.
Asked for comment, Mr. O’Keefe accused Ms. Windsor of selectively editing her videos, including an encounter Ms. Windsor and a colleague had with a Project Veritas operative who infiltrated Democracy Partners. (The episode predated her current series of undercover encounters with Republicans.) Mr. O’Keefe said that his group’s “reporting and our record speaks for itself,” and argued that Ms. Windsor had “lackluster ethics.” Democracy Partners has sued Project Veritas over its infiltration of the liberal group, and that litigation is ongoing.
In some ways, Ms. Windsor’s stings echo those of perhaps the leading practitioner of stunts meant to deceive Republicans, the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, who targeted figures including Mr. Pence and Rudolph W. Giuliani for his 2020 movie “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” But Mr. Cohen largely carries out his antics for entertainment and shock value, whereas Ms. Windsor sees herself as a more serious political player.
Her current work is funded by a small nonprofit progressive group, American Family Voices, which pursues activities “that more traditional D.C. groups weren’t able or willing” to do, according to its website.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
