The woman at the party has a gentle Southern drawl and a breathy passion for a godly America. She has a husband somewhere, and she’s a good Catholic; when she curses, it’s to drop an f-bomb—which she apologizes for—rather than take the lord’s name in vain. She pays $500 for the pleasure of dining with the Supreme Court justices, and $1,000 for the chance to pray for Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. If you’re a conservative political figure, this woman might be your biggest fan.

She also happens not to be entirely real. “Lauren Windsor” is the creation of Lauren Windsor, a self-described “advocacy journalist” and founder of The Undercurrent, a political reporting web show, whose recent undercover recordings of Roger Stone and Justice Samuel Alito have raised questions of election manipulation and political biases on the Supreme Court—but also of journalist ethics.

Earlier this month Windsor released recordings obtained from inside a dinner for the Supreme Court Historical Society, in which Justice Alito shared that, in our polarized country, “one side or the other is going to win…there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised…. It’s not like you are going to split the difference.” Meanwhile, his wife, Martha-Ann, delivered a discourse ranging from her grudge against the Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post fashion critic Robin Givhan (including an innovative pronunciation of “Balenciaga”) to her fantasy of a flag that says “shame” in Italian, as a response to a Pride flag.

A couple weeks ago, Windsor published another recording, this one of conversations with Stone at a Mar-a-Lago event in which he discusses making preparations to ensure the outcome of the upcoming election that involved “lawyers, judges, technology.” (One of Stone’s several responses to Windsor, published on X: “The radical left have their panties in a twist because I was illegally recorded saying Republicans should use every legal and technical tool to insure an honest 2024 Election.”)

Windsor, who splits her time between Washington, DC, and Los Angeles, was born in Arkansas and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Raised by a single mother—who was “outspoken,” Windsor tells Vanity Fair, but not particularly political—Windsor identified as a feminist and considered various careers: fashion design, law, public office. “I didn’t think about being a video journalist until much later.”

Now, she says, she wears “many hats.” The undercover work has ramped up over the past four years, but as executive director of American Family Voices, the nonprofit that funds Undercurrent work, “we’re always looking for ways to culture jam.”

Here, she discusses Stone’s supposed “legal action” against her, what she calls her undercover “alter ego,” and the controversy over her methodology.

Vanity Fair: You have been introduced variously as an advocacy journalist, as a liberal documentary filmmaker. So for the record, how would you describe the work that you do?

Lauren Windsor: I’m an activist, but I’m also a journalist. I like to say “advocacy journalist.” I’m also producing a documentary. Everything that we’re doing right now is going into a documentary called Gonzo for Democracy.

You’ve spoken with Stone twice now. What were you and your colleague hoping to learn in the most recent conversations?

The first time I spoke to him was last summer. I asked him, What can we do to make sure Democrats don’t steal the election again? And he said, We have a plan. It's legal, it’s technical. The RNC should have done it last time. It was in a photo line. I didn’t have the opportunity to speak to him at length about it. So we looked for another opportunity to talk to him, and then going back this time, I wanted to get to that same question: What’s his plan?

And what was your reaction as he was speaking to you?

In the moment it’s really hard to know the significance of everything. This was in March, so it was prior to Aileen Cannon indefinitely delaying the trial. We had it and I didn’t release it because we were working on this SCOTUS project—I didn’t want to jeopardize that—but obviously, as soon as the indefinite delay was announced, it was like, Oh, wow, okay. Stone was talking about having judges be part of this. And when he talked to [my colleague] Allie, he said specifically, Well, it looks like the judge in Florida is on the verge of dismissing the charges. We have a judge’s number on speed dial, or we have it handy for voter fraud, ballot harvesting, whatever.

I don’t exactly expect Roger Stone, who has embraced the persona of ultimate ratfucker, for him to say that, Oh, well, everything that I’m suggesting is above board and legal, and I totally had a come-to-Jesus. He professes to be a born-again Christian in all of these speeches that he gives—I am a little skeptical. Everything that he wants to do is legal above board; are you communicating with judges ahead of the election? Because I don’t think that would be proper. I’m not a legal expert, but I would say that I don’t think it’s proper to reach out to them and coordinate ahead of time. Again, he did not say those words, but this is Roger Stone we’re talking about, and if he’s talking about the courts being a key part of their plans to stop Democrats from stealing election, or to aid Trump winning, however you want to phrase it, I do think that there has to be considerations to that possibility. [In response to VF’s request for comment, Stone emailed: “I guess you better read the actual transcript of what I said. As you will see from the actual transcript, I said nothing even faintly resembling what she ascribes to me. I also rebut all of her assertions. Here is my detailed response below...The only thing illegal here is her surreptitious recording of me as noted It's a class three felony which could result in a five-year prison sentence and a $5000 fine,” coupled with a link to one of his blog posts entitled “ROGER STONE SAID NOTHING WRONG.”]

Shortly after you released the recording, he tweeted, “Stay tuned for a legal analysis of the many crimes and legal action against” you. Has he pursued legal action?

To my knowledge, no. I have not been served with any papers. I definitely had conversations with my attorney prior to both of these operations. It’s not illegal to record in public places in Florida. But if he wants to bring a lawsuit, I am all ears as to what that legal theory is.

Particularly when he has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of James O'Keefe, who—I certainly don’t want to be mentioned in the same breath as him. I don’t think that we are comparable other than we both engage in undercover reporting. He did not invent undercover reporting. I think that he engages in it in a very underhanded way.

There was a New York Times piece about the ethics of what you do, in which a professor of media ethics compared your tactics to that of Project Veritas. Are there other fundamental differences between what you’re doing and what Project Veritas is doing?

Well, first and foremost, I target people who are in positions of power. Roger Stone has proximity. He has access to Donald Trump. We were speaking in Mar-a-Lago. This is someone who—his views, his perspective on things—is in the public interest.

I’m not going after interns on somebody’s senate campaign. I’m not embedding within somebody’s campaign. We [Democracy Partners] argued as a point of our lawsuit [against Project Veritas] that when you take a fiduciary duty, when you’re acting as an agent of an organization, that should be out of bounds. I do believe that that’s a key difference in methodology. I go to events—whether or not that’s entirely public, you’re just showing up at a free event or you’re paying for a ticket to go—these are not situations where I am working for someone in any capacity.

Do you ever have qualms about presenting yourself, basically creating a character to present to the people who you’re talking to?

I think I would be kind of a sociopath if I didn’t have qualms about using deception to get to greater truths. But at the end of the day, that’s why I feel like you should only use that methodology of journalism when it really is warranted, when it’s, again, employed against people who are supposed to be serving in the public interest—public officials or people who have close proximity to them, people who are public—and it’s good reason to believe that utilizing the deception is in service of a greater good. I think I’ve demonstrated that with the work that I’ve published.

I’m not trying to needlessly destroy people’s lives, which is another key difference between me and James O’Keefe. In the years that we had that lawsuit going, I was doing a lot of outreach to victims so that we could gain power in greater numbers and share resources, share information. I heard some terrible stories about people having their lives destroyed, not being able to find jobs, people who went on dates with Project Veritas operatives. They think that this is a romantic connection and it’s not romantic at all. I mean, do you know what a violation that would feel like to have your life destroyed for political purposes at the hands of someone that you had romantic feelings for? It’s really disgusting.

You coupled your recordings with the Alitos with a recording that you did with Justice Roberts, who shared a pretty measured and moderate view of the court and the country, despite your prompts otherwise. What’s the purpose of releasing that?

This is not just like, Oh, let me talk to Alito. I thought I had a better chance of getting something with him because I talked to him the year before. I talked to Roberts briefly the year before too, but nothing beyond “Hello, nice to meet you.”

Did Alito recognize you from your previous encounter?

I think so, but I’m not entirely sure.

But to fully answer your question about Roberts: I didn’t see Ketanji Brown Jackson. I heard that she was there, but she wasn’t around when we got up after the dinner. I would’ve asked her the same question. It would’ve been great to have that as another point of reference, another foil against Alito. Maybe she would’ve answered in some way that would’ve indicated some bias. I wouldn’t anticipate that, but that’s speculation because I’d never met Ketanji Brown Jackson. But the point of Roberts was really to be a foil to Alito, to show how stark the contrast was. I knew that I would get a lot of blowback and people would say, Well, you were just baiting [Alito]. Well, he could have answered like John Roberts did. He could have answered the way he did in 2023, which was not newsworthy, which is why I didn’t publish it.

Surely conservatives are not the only public figures who save their most biased or extreme views for more private audiences. So do you think that there’s any allowable daylight between what a justice says or thinks in the relative private of a one-on-one conversation, or even what they’re talking about in their own home, and how that judge works on the bench? Do you think it’s possible for them to be more objective even while expressing subjective ideas?

I think that has been the assumption of all journalists up until this reporting: Oh, we know that they may be ideologues, but Lady Justice is blind. Right? Impartiality is supposed to be the bedrock of our jurisprudence. That’s what I was really trying to get at, where it’s like, Can I crack this outer shell and get some indication of whether Alito is sort of in the tank for Trump.

I’m interested in the immunity case, because the crux of my reporting has been election denial and threats to democracy. I saw January 6 happen from a couch in Atlanta, and I had witnessed 9/11 on the ground. I lived in New York. I was on my way to class a few blocks away, and I had a very similar feeling watching January 6. This is a 9/11 against this country, and I feel like I need to do whatever I can do to make sure, this never happens again. In order to do that, I need to expose the people who are perpetrating it.

So I didn’t think I was going to be able to get something from Alito. I assure you that never in my wildest dreams was I like, Oh, I have a good chance of really being successful with this. But I’m the type of person who’s like, You know what? Shoot your shot. You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take, and I’ve got to try. And so I asked.

How many of these do you do and not publish because you don’t expose what you’re interested in exposing? Are you sitting on a bunch of recordings that just felt like they didn’t do what you wanted the interview to do?

I have a really good success rate with going out and talking to somebody, and I typically post all of the exchange of whatever that is. Now, I have some conference material that I have been working through that isn’t published yet. That’ll be in the documentary, but that’s not something that I’m going to delve into right now. I did publish some newsworthy things contemporaneously; I am not someone who wants to sit on news. More than anything, the stuff that’s unpublished is because there’s a substantial amount of it that needs to be processed, whether or not it’s video and audio transcriptions, and then written up about as part of a larger series. I can’t really go into it.

It’s just not the most pressing thing from a time standpoint. I could have sat on the Alito stuff for the documentary, but I felt like ultimately we’re about to be in the middle of an entire month of disclosures. If there’s any chance whatsoever that this reporting could make an impact on how the immunity case is decided or when it’s released, then I want to be able to have that impact while I can and not wonder about it after the fact, like, if I had done this, would it have changed anything?

You’ve done on-camera interviews now with MSNBC, CNN, various others. Are you worried that your own exposure might make it trickier for you to do your undercover work going forward?

Sure, but I’ve been going undercover more substantively since 2020, and I’ve been doing undercover work and bird-dogging since 2012. I went undercover in 2014, but it was more sporadic because I was really saving undercover work for retreats that would be almost impenetrable. The American Legislative Exchange Council, Koch Brothers donor retreats. These aren’t things where you can register as a journalist and just go.

If you need to sign up, do you always go under your own name?

Yeah, I do go under my own name.

So I’m curious whether you think there’s going to be a point where you’re just blacklisted from certain circles.

There’s one of me, and there’s tons of political events all over the country, and the thing about politics is that they’re not trying to have a velvet rope. Politics is all about addition, not subtraction. You’re trying to bring as many people in as possible, and without going into methodology here, there’s a lot of ways to accomplish things. Even if I were to be quote-unquote blacklisted, you just find different ways to do things—that are still legal. I would never want to insinuate that there’s anything illegal that I would consider.

There’s a certain amount of acting that goes into these interviews. Is that a skill you’ve developed over time?

For the most part, it’s kind of the same persona. It’s a Southern, evangelical alter ego. I grew up in the South. I just affect more of a Southern accent, and I think about the very religious women that I grew up around. How would they talk about things and how would they view things? You develop a posture that doesn’t feel totally foreign. It doesn’t feel like I’m necessarily acting. It just feels like someone that I knew growing up, kind of borrowing the mask for a night.

Talk to me about your cursing in your conversation with Martha-Ann Alito. Was that planned, or is that you, or is that the alternate version of yourself?

I curse like a sailor anyway. It’s not like I am not some sort of puritanical angel in real life. So it wasn’t a huge put-on, but I was definitely trying to get a certain intimacy out of her, and I felt like if I were more raw, if I were a little bit more profane—and of course, apologizing profusely—it comes across as more genuine, I guess. Clearly, it’s inappropriate to talk to the wife of the Supreme Court justice in that way. You notice I wasn’t cursing around Samuel Alito, but I did say to him,” I don’t want to curse, but it just makes me so angry” at some point. It’s a way to endear yourself to someone.

Do you find doing these operations fun?

Sure. I derive an enormous amount of amusement out of it, otherwise, I wouldn’t do it.

Are there particular political figures who you haven't spoken to who are in your sights?

For sure. I mean, to the degree that you publish the names, that obviously makes it harder for me to go after them, but imagine anyone who's in the inner circle who aided and abetted the insurrection.

Do you keep a running list, and how do you decide who's next, or what's next? Without going into details about who's actually next for you?

It's really opportunistic. I would love to talk to Mark Meadows, for example, but is he doing any public events? I was supposed to go to a public event with him that he canceled once it was publicized that he was going to be there; this was right after the big story in the news about him being registered to vote in two places. Obviously Clarence Thomas. It’s a huge list.

Are there people whose careers you would be interested in emulating or that inspire you in your own work?

I'm not sure about emulation, but an early political icon for me was Bill Maher, when I was in high school, and he was hosting Politically Incorrect. I was living in Nashville, Tennessee, and it was a totally different perspective. He was really critical of both parties, and I really respected his viewpoint, and I still respect him. I think he has taken a lot of flack over the years. Jon Stewart, I really love, for example, his iconic interview with Jim Cramer where he just rakes him over the coals for his part in the 2008 financial collapse. Cramer is sitting there reduced to a sad sack of shit, really, because he just brings it back, like, Roll the tape, roll the tape, roll the tape. You knew, you knew. He just brings the receipts and it’s so thoroughly researched. It was incredible, watching it. [On his show, Cramer advised buying Bear Stearns stock shortly before it collapsed.]

I was living in downtown Los Angeles with my then boyfriend whose business was doing robocalls for the subprime mortgage industry. His business tanked very quickly into us moving in together. It was really hard to watch this happen over the span of a couple of years. We tried to hold it together, but it was devastating to see people losing jobs, their livelihoods. I was laid off. There were people in my family who were laid off, people losing houses, friends who were getting laid off. There was a lot of financial pain to go around, and the job market sucked. And It felt to me as a different kind of ground zero. I was at the ground zero for the subprime mortgage industry collapse and witnessing Occupy—all these people coming together to demand accountability from Wall Street and from these financial institutions that really were the cause of this wreckage—was a spiritual experience for me.

It sounds like it felt very personal to you.

It was very personal, yeah.

Do you feel like it’s changing people’s minds?

I've had an outpouring of support, more so than any other time of positive support. Yeah, I've gotten death threats: “I hope somebody ass rapes you with a broom handle.” Nasty. You’re a whore, you’re a Democrat whore, George Soros love child, the usual sorts of abusive emails and tweets. I don't really give a shit about that. If someone were to show up at my doorstep, then obviously that's a bigger problem. I'm going to do this as long as I can continue to do it safely and as long as it's gratifying. But I do think that there is an expiration to that.

Correction: This article previously referred to The Undercurrent as part of the Young Turks network; that affiliation ended in 2014.