VIDEO PUTS DEMOCRATS ON DEFENSIVE ABOUT DIRTY TRICKS

VIDEO PUTS DEMOCRATS ON DEFENSIVE ABOUT DIRTY TRICKS
By STEVE EDER and JONATHAN MARTIN

A Democratic operative, wearing a checkered blue shirt and a tie, spoke calmly, explaining exactly how agents could infiltrate the rallies of Donald J. Trump and cause mayhem among the Republican’s nominee team, his security staff and supporters.

Creating an explosive reaction, said the operative, Scott Foval, was “the whole point of it.”

Mr. Foval and Robert Creamer, another operative working for the Democratic National Committee, were the unwitting stars of an undercover video released this week in which they and others were captured discussing unseemly tactics like instigating violence at Mr. Trump’s rallies and arranging for fraudulent voting.

Sign Up For NYT Now’s Morning Briefing Newsletter

Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the party committee moved to distance themselves from the behavior described in the videos, and the committee said the two men were no longer assisting it. The party also cast doubt on the veracity of the released video, which was produced by Project Veritas, a conservative group led by the activist James O’Keefe that has been heavily criticized as using deceptive editing.

Still, the videos were an embarrassment for Mrs. Clinton at a moment when she is trying to frame Mr. Trump’s claims of a rigged election as nothing more than the fevered dreams of a conspiracy theorist. During Wednesday’s debate Mr. Trump referred to the videos, which together have been viewed more than eight million times on YouTube, as proof of unfair play.

And just months after the Democratic chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced out of her post after hacked emails revealed party officials discussing how to damage Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, the Clinton campaign was again forced on the defensive because of the actions of the party.

Campaign finance records show that the Democratic committee made two payments, one in July and another in August, totaling about $64,000 to Mobilize Inc., a Chicago-based firm connected to Mr. Creamer, for “communications consulting.”

The committee said that Mr. Creamer was brought on for something relatively tame: “bracketing,” the industry term for when one party holds a dueling event, like a news conference, to draw attention from an opposition event.

But in the Project Veritas videos, the tactics described went far beyond mere distraction.

Mr. Creamer is not seen on the Project Veritas videos approving or endorsing plans to instigate fights at Trump rallies, but his underling, Mr. Foval, is shown boasting about using unseemly methods, like planting people at the gatherings to agitate the crowd.

“Sometimes the crazies bite,” Mr. Foval said. “Sometimes the crazies don’t bite.”

Both men and others in the video are seen discussing — or at least nodding along when their undercover interviewers broach the idea — how people could illegally vote. Among the practices described are moving voters across state lines by using cars with the destination state’s plates, and using pay stubs to make illegal immigrants appear to be citizens for voter registration purposes.

While the 2016 race has been remarkable for its ugly tone, there is a rich political history of campaigns pushing ethical and legal boundaries to undermine the opposition. In 1972, supporters of Richard M. Nixon, who was even better positioned to win than Mrs. Clinton, unleashed an organized campaign of sabotage: forging letters, disrupting rallies and even flying an airplane over the Democratic National Convention that year with a banner that read “Peace Pot Promiscuity — Vote McGovern.”

And during the Florida presidential recount in 2000, George W. Bush’s backers, including the longtime Trump confidant Roger J. Stone, staged the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” when young Republicans were flown into South Florida to disrupt the recount.

But it was unclear from the Project Veritas videos whether any of the elaborate plans had been carried out.

“We do not believe, or have any evidence to suggest, that the activities articulated in the video actually occurred,” said Donna Brazile, the interim Democratic chairwoman. The Clinton campaign similarly denounced the tactics, while chiding Project Veritas, saying it has “been known to offering misleading video out of context.”

Mr. Creamer said in a statement on Wednesday that the “unprofessional and careless hypothetical conversations” caught on hidden camera were regrettable, and he denied that any of the “schemes described” had ever taken place.

He told The Chicago Sun-Times that one interviewer had posed as a potential donor and another as a niece of the donor, raising the possibility that people captured in the videos were merely engaging in puffery to pry some money loose.

Mr. Foval did not respond to a message seeking comment on Thursday.

Mr. Creamer is a longtime Democratic strategist from Chicago, and was a consultant during President Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. According to White House guest logs, he has been a frequent visitor, usually as part of groups of Democratic activists or while accompanying his wife, Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic congresswoman from Illinois, to social events.

The hacked emails of the party committee and of John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, have shown an occasional lack of coordination between the party and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. They also give a glimpse of Mr. Creamer’s role in party strategy.

During the final days of the 2012 campaign, Mr. Creamer co-hosted a call with the Democratic committee’s communications director at the time, Brad Woodhouse, for supporters about the “state of play” in battleground states, according to Mr. Podesta’s emails made public by WikiLeaks.

In the late spring of this year, Mr. Creamer was included and referred to on a series of internal Democratic committee emails also published by WikiLeaks. In one email, the party officials discussed having a presence with signs outside the Republican National Committee when Mr. Trump met there with Speaker Paul D. Ryan in May.

“Discussed with Creamer, et. al today,” wrote Eric Walker, a communications staff member.

Trump rallies were a particularly ripe target, gatherings that have sometimes been marked by violence, as Mr. Trump revved up his supporters with tough talk and protesters tried to disrupt the events.

A seasoned field operative who had worked with People for the American Way and Americans United for Change, Mr. Foval and others in the videos claimed credit for orchestrating some high-profile incidents, including when protesters heckled Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, then a presidential candidate, at the 2015 Iowa State Fair.

Mr. Foval appeared to claim that his group had trained a 68-year-old woman who breathes with the help of an oxygen tank and was knocked to the ground during a confrontation at a Trump rally in North Carolina last month.

But in a phone interview Thursday, the woman, Shirley Teter, said she attended the rally, which was near her home, on her own accord and had not received any protest training.

“The last thing in the world I want to see is Trump getting elected to be our president,” Ms. Teter said. “It is the first time in years that my heart actually ached, and I felt I had to do it.”

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.