Project Veritas, the creepo undercover right-wing sting team run by James O’Keefe, spent months trying to fool the Washington Post into printing false accusations against theocrat and alleged pedophile Roy Moore in order to undermine the real allegations made by women that he was sexual inappripriate with them when they were minors. Moore, a twice-deposed former judge, is the only man alive who might make Luther Strange and Jeff Sessions, the two previous occupants of the Alabama Senate seat he is vying for, look almost normal.

Jaime Phillips, the woman trying to claim that Moore impregnated her when she was underage and then urged her to have an abortion, was spotted by Post reporters walking into the offices of Project Veritas. They confronted her on cameras of their own.

“The Washington Post seems to want a Nobel Prize for vetting a source correctly,” O’Keefe later said in response.

On the same day that the Post story broke, prosecutor Jennifer Kerkhoff introduced a Project Veritas video into the trial of the first six of the 193 to be charged under the federal Riot Act for protesting during the inauguration.

It came during the testimony of an undercover officer who infiltrated a Jan. 8 meeting in a church where various groups coordinated Inauguration Day activities. Kerkhoff asked the officer if he recorded the meeting and he said that his supervisors told him not to. But, he said, MPD later obtained a video of the same meeting.

It was filmed by a Project Veritas operative. And here’s where it gets really fucked up: We don’t know how much the Project Veritas video was edited.

“I’m not aware of any edits or anything,” Kerkhoff said in court. When the judge asked her who provided the video to the MPD, she replied: “A third party.”

Even worse, we don’t know how many Project Veritas operatives were in the room, saying things that may have colored undercover officer Bryan Adelmeyer’s perception of the events. So it taints his testimony as well. Despite the Veritas in its name, O’Keefe’s organization is built on deceit—and may in fact lose non-profit status in New York because he failed to disclose his criminal record for using false premises to enter a federal building in an attempted Watergate/ Bob the Builder cosplay self-sting.

By contrast, Alexei Wood, a photojournalist who is one of the defendants in the current trial, is almost radically transparent about the live-stream video, which occupied much of the motion hearings over the past several months, that he filmed during the protest.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I livestreamed myself from beginning to end, and the entire world can decide whether I incited a riot,” he said. “It’s out there for the whole world to decide, and I’m glad it is.”

The government, on the other hand, is not only using Project Veritas’ unauthenticated video, but they actually edited the videos in order to obscure the identity of the still-unknown Project Veritas operative, as if he were an officer.

This is further evidence of the deep connection between law enforcement, government officials, and right-wing movements. We know that an MPD communications officer provided a list of names of the defendants to far-right conspiracy site Got News. And video obtained by the Real News shows a U.S. Park Police officer in D.C. ordering a protester to follow the orders of a militia member because “he works for me.”

Two of the officers who testified in the trial were from D.C.’s 7th district. The officers who raided the home of a man based on his alleged presence in the Project Veritas video were also 7th district.

In July, an officer from the guns and drugs “powershift” unit of the 7th was photographed wearing—and may have designed—a T-shirt with a grim reaper, white-power symbols, and “Powershift,” “Seventh District,” “MPDC,” and “let me see that waistband jo”—this last a reference to searching inside the underwear of citizens in “jump out” corner-clearing drug busts.

These D.C. guys have the same view of policing as Trump, who urged officers to be violent with suspects—or at least not to shield their heads when putting them into a car or van. And Trump, of course, also tweeted false, O’Keefe-esque videos from Britain First in an attempt to stoke up anti-Muslim sentiment, or as Sarah Huckabee Sanders put it, “elevate the dialogue.”

So it is no surprise that federal prosecutors in D.C. are willing to stoop as low as O’Keefe to further their dissension of protest.

The last time O’Keefe tried so hard to sting the media, it involved dildos, hair grease, a boat, and a CNN reporter, Abbie Boudreau, who never got on the boat, causing the explosively bad idea to backfire.

He was later accused by one of his own operatives of drugging her when she refused his romantic overtures and then enlisting an army of right-wing trolls, including her former friend Andrew Breitbart, to harass her when she tried to expose him (listen to this week’s podcast with Chris Faraone, Dig Boston editor and author of “I Killed Breitbart” for more on this).

But, as Moore’s campaign shows, that’s the way the far right works now. If you’re on their side, they will defend almost anything. A couple weeks ago, I wrote a story for the New York Times arguing that Charles Manson was alt-right. “Charles Manson wasn’t the inevitable outgrowth of the Sixties. If anything, he was a harbinger of today’s far right,” the Times Op-ed page tweeted with a link.

Laura Ingraham, the far-right radio host who appeared to give a Seig Heil to Trump at the RNC last summer, tweeted a response. “‘Far right’? You mean ‘right so far,’ as in @realDonaldTrump has been right so far abt how to kick the economy into high gear.”

Ingraham’s tweet is the perfect emblem of the senseless mass prosecution of protesters. It is senseless.

And maybe that is why Trump retweeted it.

Baynard Woods is a reporter at The Real News. Email baynard@therealnews.com. Twitter @baynardwoods.

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Mary Finn, an editor with Democracy in Crisis, often makes extensive notes on my columns—in this case, we decided they were far more interesting than the column itself. So we left them, in dialogue with a half-formed column.

I have been trying to figure out a way, as a white man, to write about the mounting evidence that we are all horrible. Who needs to hear what I say about this?

Some guys are staying away from writing about this because they’ve behaved badly and they don’t want to be hypocrites or get caught. Can Glenn Thrush (NYT) write credibly about Trump’s assaults when his own aggression and follow-up apology emails are now on full display? This column’s women readers may feel dissatisfied with your reflections. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.—M.F.

I made a list of every man I’ve ever known who I’d put my 401K on the line that they’ve 1) Never harassed someone at work 2) Never coerced a woman for sex 3) Never could be perceived by a woman as doing any of the above. There are four men on my list and I’m 42. Maybe we’re now seeing men for who they are. Even the “good” men. The “good men” need to see themselves as they are, not how they want to be seen.—M.F.

I’ve been talking to parent friends about raising boys to be good men. Is this even possible?-M.F.

But in the absence of an idea of what the good man may even be like, I worry that the more racist a man is the more likely he is to be believed and his victims vilified. Donald Trump and Roy Moore are only the most obvious examples.

I was talking to a nominally progressive guy in San Francisco and he said, “I mean, it just seems like we can’t win. It feels like no matter what we do, it’s never enough.” This guy despises Roy Moore but he feels misunderstood and attacked for being a man in the Me Too moment. There’s some solidarity between Mobile, AL and the Bay Area after all.—M.F.

Sixteen women have gone on record to say they were sexually assaulted or harassed by Donald Trump. He himself admitted to assaulting women in the Access Hollywood tape. There are further allegations that he raped a 13 year old. He was elected.

It’s not a coincidence that the Women’s March was the first mass movement under Trump. Trump will get away with his sexual assaults. Still, there’s something that’s happened to me since he got elected that has changed the way I see men. A friend told me she is sick of men. Me too. I’m having a hard time staying patient with men who pontificate. I think I’m holding regular guys (bosses, landlords, men on blind dates) accountable in a way I didn’t use to because I know Trump won’t be held accountable. Is that why so many women are participating in this national mass disclosure movement? If you can’t hold the president accountable, may as well make sure your boss isn’t a mini-Trump. —M.F.

More than 50% of white women voters checked the box for Donald Trump, even after all of this was known.

He also defeated the first woman nominee. I think that matters but I’m not entirely sure how. Why are the women feeling any level of confidence to tell their stories with THIS guy as president? I’d think it would have been safer to disclose when Obama, a self-declared feminist, was in charge. Why now?—M.F.

It’s weird that we’ve turned all of this horror into a partisan issue, but that is partially what it has become. And the Democrats are responding horribly.

It is unbelievable that the Clintons threw themselves an anniversary celebration of the 1992 win. I’ve always believed that Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick in the 1970s. It was disgusting to see the Democratic party luminaries celebrating Clinton. Bill Clinton and Donald Trump got away with sexual assault and got elected. Democrats need to reject Bill Clinton to have any credibility on Trump.—M.F.

Rather than seeing this as an opportunity to truly interrogate themselves and what they are as a party, they want Franken to stay because they see it as politically advantageous.

Is there any gradation in how we judge what all these men did? My women friends say things like, “If it’s a one-time ass grab and the guy got scolded, that’s different than a serial predator.” Should the consequences be applied bluntly or is there any room for nuance? I mean, I don’t want a boss who even grabbed one ass. But, would I be okay with a one-time ass-grab senator if he votes to keep Obamacare? I’m not sure how to judge.—M.F.

Some young men growing up in this moment may take the failures of Franken and C.K. and Charlie Rose as hypocrisy and embrace their inner Trump. They have an answer to these questions that they can use: Ignore it all. Be A Men’s Rights Douche or a Far-Right Western Chauvinist ™.

I got a text from a “good guy” friend of mine:”Jesus Christ, Charlie Rose??” The more “good guy” or “progressive” the accused, the harder the blow. It really may be ALL men. Yes, even Charlie Rose. Are there any “good” guys out there?—M.F

It’s the “good guys” who can be especially problematic because they hide behind their rhetoric (Franken): they can be sexual predators AND be seen as feminists/champions for the people. At least we know who Roy Moore really is.—M.F.

Others will hold their worst parts in check out of fear of social consequences. Is that the best we can hope for, something like a paraphrase of Flannery O’Connor? “He would have been a good man … if there had been someone there to shoot him every minute of her life”

Didn’t we already have this conversation during Anita Hill? I’m skeptical.—M.F.

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-Target announced it would close its Mondawmin location in February because it was underperforming. Crucial to the redesign of Mondawmin Mall, the Target was a badly needed resource for many who didn’t have access to lots of shopping options in an area that had been neglected for years. Maybe we should consider investing locally and stop trying so hard to court giant corporate structures who will pull out the moment things don’t benefit them.

-In response to the alarming homicide rate and attacks by teens in neighborhoods that don’t usually see that sort of thing, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided that the heads of more than half of city agencies must meet up at police headquarters every morning to better combat crime—which pretty much means everybody answers to the police now? Crime is a symptom, not the disease, and it might help us all if we thought about it that way. Our other complaint? The mayor called for the private sector to help finance a $10 million expansion of the highly effective Safe Streets program while continuing to find more and more public funding for police and private developers.

-In response to attacks by teens in neighborhoods that don’t usually see that sort of thing, Commissioner Kevin Davis has announced a number of hasty crime prevention plans including one where young-looking undercover cops go to the neighborhoods to catch the bad kids, “21 Jump Street” style. Davis’ other big plan? Throw more teens in jail and charge 16-year-olds as adults—something the law demands for violent crime but a policy that has been shown not to work.

-With over a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct leveled against Kevin Spacey, Netflix has fired their leading man from “House of Cards”—and good riddance. Production has been put on hold while writers on show, which is filmed in Baltimore and other parts of Maryland, are scrambling to rewrite the final season. Locally, groups like Hollaback Baltimore have been putting together discussions and workshops as the #metoo movement pushes on and more stories come out. It’s time to reevaluate how we respond to abuse.

-Governor Larry Hogan condemned Roy Moore after the Alabama maniac was accused of propositioning a 14-year-old 40 years ago. While some have doubled down in support of Moore, Hogan at least said Moore has got to go, declaring him “unfit for office” and asking if Republicans “would be so quick to excuse him if the victim was their daughter or if the offender was a Democrat.” The bar for Republicans to do the right thing is so low.

-The Baltimore Museum of Art announced that in conjunction with a solo exhibition by famed artist Mark Bradford, whom BMA Director Christopher Bedford has called “the greatest living abstract painter,” Bradford will start a partnership with Greenmount West Community Center, providing training and equipment for a silk-screening project for kids. At a public talk hosted at Union Baptist Church over the weekend, Bradford and the BMA team emphasized the importance of strengthening community-driven projects that already exist and work, rightly echoing the sentiments of local organizers.

-Where there is black pain, there will always be white people looking to profit. Over on Twitter, one-time-officer-turned-police-brutality-pundit Michael Wood claimed that race was just “a social construct,” identified himself as “anti-identity politics,” and said that black women were falsely claiming “special exemption.” The internet—in particular Morgan University’s Dr. Lawrence Brown—came for him, much to the delight of many in Baltimore who are sick of Wood’s white-centered wokeness.

-A 2014 incident involving Baltimore resident Jamal Kennedy and Baltimore City Police outside Melba’s Place in Waverly has resulted in a $135,000 settlement with the city, the Baltimore Brew reported last week. Kennedy sued the city, claiming officers acted inappropriately when they tasered and beat him (the officers were cleared in court of all wrongdoing). The money, like all police settlements, comes with a gag order silencing Kennedy from talking about the specifics of his case.

-There were four homicides in Baltimore over the past week (Nov. 6-13, the week before the Beat to press), with two on Nov. 6 (Latasha Walls, Winfield Parker) and two on Nov. 12 (Dashon Griffin, Gerald Gardner). It follows the second ceasefire weekend where there was one homicide on Nov. 4 (Tony Mason Jr.) and a brief burst of hope where residents saw no homicides for most of last week. As of Nov. 13, day 316 of 2017, Baltimore has had 305 homicides.

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