You know that video in which James O’Keefe dressed up like a pimp during his ACORN sting operation?

Turns out, the video was just promotional material recorded after O’Keefe and co-star Hannah Giles visited ACORN offices — O’Keefe didn’t actually wear a pimp outfit into any of the offices.

Dave Weigel got confirmation of this news last week from Giles:

I asked Giles about a criticism that’s often been leveled against them — that they hyped up the video by wearing outrageous clothes in promotional materials and the videos’ introductions that they didn’t wear in the actual stings.

“We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume,” said Giles. “That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people.”

So it’s not just that the videos were heavily edited — portions of them were literally invented out of thin air. It’s just more evidence of the conservative narrative malfunction: for the right-wing to tell its story, it has to make stuff up.