Roblox politics role-player fakes journalist credentials to sneak into White House press corps

Roblox, the online game platform pretty much every kid is glued to right now, is advertised with the tagline, “Powering Imagination.” This seems to bear out for at least one user, whose imagination was powered up well enough that they decided to fake press credentials in order to ask questions during recent White House press briefings.

The story of the citizen journalist in question, who uses the screen name Kacey “Lego” Montagu, was detailed by Politico in an article sure to inspire plastic-faced, blocky-shouldered Roblox players around the world. Montagu claims to be “an 18-year old law student from the United Kingdom who was born in the U.S.” They created a fake publication called White House News, pretended to have worked for The Daily Mail, and “[communicated] regularly with top White House reporters and has had several exchanges with White House officials.”

Since late last year, Montagu ran Twitter accounts called @whschedule and @whpoolreport (both now suspended) that attracted a following that included political journalists and members of the Biden administration. Last week at the news briefing, after asking to have their questions read by a “colleague” due to COVID safety precautions, Montagu achieved their goal.

While this kind of access could’ve been used to wreak havoc on the briefing, Montagu used their time to ask for information about construction on the White House lawn, presidential portrait unveilings, and the nature of Barack Obama’s involvement with Joe Biden’s administration. (A clip of these questions being asked is available here.) Not long after this, though, the press began to look further into Montagu’s credentials and the jig was up.

“I love journalism, and I think the Press Corps is a doing a pretty bad job at the moment,” Montagu told Politico. “So I decided I would ensure some transparency and ask some questions me and some friends wanted the answer to.” Montagu’s interest in politics apparently runs deep. They previously served as “Secretary Of State” on the nUSA Roblox role-playing group, which is basically an online version of a mock American government. Hilariously, they left that esteemed position over a disagreement with the nUSA President, who declared war on the U.K. in the role-playing group.

Montagu says they’re “not motivated by politics, but [are] socially liberal and conservative on economic issues.” Their online pals corroborate this side of Montagu’s story, saying they believe the whole deception was actually motivated by nothing more than wanting to have something to brag about on the internet.

Read more about the whole, bizarre affair over at Politico.

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