The plan was simple: Use undercover operatives to entrap F.B.I. The group used a shell company to rent it, according to Project Veritas documents and interviews. The house had a view of the Potomac River and was steps from a dark, narrow staircase made famous by the film “The Exorcist.”
Seddon pushed for Project Veritas to establish a base of operations in Washington and found a six-bedroom estate near the Georgetown University campus, according to former Project Veritas employees. Trump’s education secretary.ĭuring the interview process, candidates fielded questions meant to figure out their political leanings, including which famous people they might invite to a dinner party and which publications they get their news from.Īfter finishing the exercises, the operatives were told to burn the training materials, according to a former Project Veritas employee.Īround the time Mr. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as Mr. Seddon and his colleagues conducted hiring interviews inside an airport hangar at the Cody airport known locally as the Prince hangar, according to interviews and documents. The early training for the operations took place at the Prince family ranch near Cody, Wyo., and Mr. “The student must create and maintain a fictional cover,” one document read. The students were encouraged to think of their “targets as a possible future access agent, potential donor, support/facilities agent.”
One role-playing exercise involved a trainee being interrogated by a law enforcement officer and having to “defend their cover” and “avoid exciting” the officer.Īnother exercise instructs trainees in how to target a person in an elevator. Seddon built espionage tactics into training for the group’s operatives - teaching them to use deception to secure information from potential targets. On Thursday, James O’Keefe, the head of the group, said this article was “a smear piece.”ĭocuments obtained by The Times show the extent that Mr. Project Veritas did not respond to specific questions about the operations. McMaster resigned on March 22, a move that avoided a firing by the president who had soured on the three-star general. The operation was ultimately abandoned in March 2018 when the conspirators ended up getting what they wanted, albeit by different means. The group, which is a nonprofit, has a history of conducting sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and advocacy groups. McMaster making inappropriate remarks that his opponents could use as leverage to get him ousted as national security adviser.Īlthough several Project Veritas operatives were involved in the plot, it is unclear whether the group directed it. It involved a plan to hire a woman armed with a hidden camera to capture Mr. McMaster, revealed in interviews and documents, was one of the most brazen operations of the campaign.
This account is drawn from more than a dozen interviews with former Project Veritas employees and others familiar with the campaign, along with current and former government officials and internal Project Veritas documents. McMaster, Barbara Ledeen, said she was brought on by someone “with access to McMaster’s calendar.” Trump’s White House advisers had direct knowledge of the campaign is unclear, but one of the participants in the operation against Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies in the government’s ranks. The efforts to target American officials show how a campaign once focused on exposing outside organizations slowly morphed into an operation to ferret out Mr. He trained operatives at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming. Seddon ran an expansive effort to gain access to the unions and campaigns and led a hiring effort that nearly tripled the number of the group’s operatives, according to interviews and deposition testimony. Last year, The New York Times reported that Mr. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018. Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets.