Prankster Infiltrates Psaki Press Briefing, Tricks WH Into Thinking She's Real Reporter

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Keeping up with all the miscues of the Biden team is a bit of a full time job, in part because they don’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing half the time.

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You would think that Joe Biden, having been in government most of his adult life and having worked for Barack Obama for eight years, might have figured out how to do things. But it’s like Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates said about Biden: that he’d been wrong on every foreign policy issue for four decades. Just extend that out a bit; he and his folks have been wrong on a lot of things, foreign and domestic, so far.

But apparently one online gamer thought the Biden folks had been so bad at transparency and the press hasn’t been doing its job, so she decided that she was going to infiltrate Jen Psaki’s press briefings and ask some questions that she thought the press should be asking.

The person who has the online profile “Kacey ‘Lego’ Montagu” claimed she was a correspondent for the “White House News” and duped members of the White House press corps into asking at least four of her questions to Jen Psaki.

Because of the limitations of the pandemic, some of the reporters are asking questions for other reporters. Montagu contacted reporters from The Plain Dealer, CQ Roll Call and the Washington Blade, who then asked Jen Psaki her questions. The questions were about “Covid-19 travel bans, ambassadorships, Biden’s reaction to Microsoft being hacked and most recently about Biden’s relationship with former President Barack Obama,” according to Fox News.

This video at Mediaite appears to be one of the questions that Montagu managed to sneak in through Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade, asking about the Obamas and how frequently they were in touch with Joe Biden. Here’s Jen Psaki’s answer to the Montagu question:

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CBS’s Ed O’Keefe followed up with more, after Montagu’s question opened the door.

Montagu spoke to Politico, “I love journalism, and I think the press corps is doing a pretty bad job at the moment, so I decided I would ensure some transparency and ask some questions me and some friends wanted the answer to.”

Great job, going to guess that she shook things up a bit and probably made the questions better and more real.

But apparently they didn’t ask one question she posed that hit at transparency.

“Recently the White House has had read outs of calls and has the name of the people saying ‘Senior Administration official’ so why isn’t the White House releasing the names of people in the calls, making these comments so that they can be held accountable to the American people?” Montagu wrote to a journalist in the briefing room.

It’s been going on awhile.

According to Politico, she posed as a member of White House Correspondents Association, claiming to be a reporter for The Daily Mail. But she wasn’t connected to either. She had two Twitter accounts that were followed by a lot of reporters and even White House officials. @WHSchedule had a following of more than 1,300, including several White House correspondents (some from Politico).

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The @WHPoolReport account amassed more than 600 in a few weeks’ time, including some who work in the administration like Michael LaRosa, press secretary for Jill Biden and Symone Sanders, a senior advisor and chief spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris. Montagu has communicated regularly with top White House reporters and has had several exchanges with White House officials. At least once, a White House official was connected with Montagu to ‘circle back’ with more information on one of her questions that was asked of Jen Psaki.

It’s believed that Montagu is connected to online global gaming platform called ROBLOX, where users jokingly call themselves “Legos.”

So, we have to doff our chapeau to Montagu: to troll the Biden folks, get actual ‘circle back’ on a Psaki question, and shake up the press corps and Psaki a little when they certainly need it.

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