Days after Project Veritas founder and CEO was threatened by lawyers from the campaign of Phil Murphy for exposing high level campaign staffers comments in hidden video releases, homes of Project Veritas journalists were raided by the FBI in conjunction with a suspected theft of a diary from Ashley Biden, daughter of President Joe Biden.
On Saturday, the FBI, according to the New York Times, “Carried out a court-ordered search of Mr. O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, N.Y., early on Saturday morning, after having searched the homes of two associates of Mr. O’Keefe on Thursday as part of the investigation.
The Biden family has a pattern of losing items with sensitive data. First, it was Hunter Biden’s laptop, now Ashley Biden’s diary.
The U.S. Department of Justice has not released any information regarding the search at O’Keefe’s New York state home.
The DOJ asked O’Keefe to keep the raid to himself and not tell anyone.
“The Government hereby requests that you voluntarily refrain from disclosing the existence of the subpoena to any third party. While you are under no obligation to comply with our request, we are requesting you not to make any disclosure in order to preserve the confidentiality of the investigation and because disclosure of the existence of this investigation might interfere with and impede the investigation,” the grand jury subpoena read.
The DOJ, O’Keefe claims instead leaked news of the raid to the New York Times.
“While the Department of Justice requested us to not disclose the existence of the subpoena, something very unusual happened. Within an hour of one of our reporters’ homes being secretly raided by the FBI, The New York Times, who we are currently suing for defamation, contacted the Project Veritas reporter for comment. We do not know how The New York Times was aware of the execution of a search warrant at our reporter’s home, or the subject matter of the search warrant, as a Grand Jury investigation is secure,” O’Keefe said in a statement.
The reason? The Department of Justice was searching for Biden’s diary, which O’Keefe said was offered to him for sale, but he refused the offer. That diary was found abandoned in a room which Biden stayed in.
“Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary. We had never met or heard of the tipsters. The tipsters indicated that the diary had been abandoned in a room in which Ms. Biden stayed at the time, and in which the tipsters stayed in temporarily after Ms. Biden departed the room,” O’Keefe said. “The tipsters indicated that the diary included explosive allegations against then-candidate, Joe Biden. The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary. The tipsters were represented by attorneys who handled the negotiations with Project Veritas.”
O’Keefe said he questioned the authenticity of the diary when approached by the sellers.
“We investigated the claims provided to us, as journalists do. We took steps to corroborate the authenticity of the diary. At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof,” he added. “We attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden, but that attorney refused to authenticate it. Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner. We never published it.”
Now, Biden is claiming her diary was stolen, prompting the DOJ raid on the homes of Project Veritas reporters and O’Keefe said the move is nothing but federal intimidation of the team of investigative journalists.
“Should the Southern District of New York try to take away our First Amendment rights to uncover and publish newsworthy stories without government intimidation, be assured, Project Veritas will not back down,” he added.