Project Veritas and other conservative activist organizations employed a female former reality television contestant to try to “honey trap” Democratic staffers and operatives, recording their private conversations in the hope of obtaining embarrassing or compromising information, the Daily Beast reports.
Anna Khait, who appeared on the 32nd season of the Mark Burnett-produced television show Survivor, was hired by Project Veritas and another group called Accuracy in Media to deceive men into thinking she was romantically interested in them so that they would take to her about her employers and associates.
Using multiple names but fond of the name “Hope Higgins,” Khait would meet the men and enter into a fake relationship with them. She’d send them flirty emails and messages. One, Michael Kolenc, was a former campaign staffer of Democratic Oregon Governor Kate Brown. Khait surreptitiously recorded some conversations in which Kolenc complained about Brown and some of the campaign staffing decisions.
That audio and video of the conversation was released via the Project Veritas website and YouTube channel. Oregon Republicans used Kolenc’s comments to allege Brown used illegal campaign volunteers.
Khait was then employed by Accuracy in Media to try to entice West Virginia education union leader Jay O’Neal into claiming the teachers union was full of far left socialists and more radical than the group’s leadership.
This past May, Khait tried a similar ploy and her “Higgins” alias to target Texas teachers unions. She used the same email address she used in the West Virginia scam as well. Applying for a job at the union, “Higgins” claimed she wanted to learn more about “Texas public school culture.”
Union officials confirmed “Higgins” true identify when parts of her story didn’t match up. “The spidey sense was off,” Texas American Federation of Teachers President Zeph Capo told The Daily Beast.