by WorldTribune Staff, November 7, 2021
The FBI on Saturday raided the home of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe two days after agents searched the homes of his associates in the Southern District of New York’s inquiry into the alleged theft of Ashley Biden’s diary. Ashley Biden, 40, is Joe Biden’s daughter.
While Big Media mostly ignored the story, The New York Times on Friday reported that the FBI had engaged in two raids on addresses as part of an investigation into how Ashley Biden’s diary was obtained.
In a video statement on Friday, O’Keefe defended Project Veritas’s handling of the diary, which the group did not publish. He defended his actions and his colleagues, stating that they were operating as ethical journalists who turned the diary over to the authorities and sought to return it to a lawyer for Ashley Biden.
“It appears the Southern District of New York now has journalists in their sights for the supposed crime of doing their jobs lawfully and honestly,” O’Keefe said in the video. “Our efforts were the stuff of responsible, ethical journalism and we are in no doubt that Project Veritas acted properly at each and every step.”
National File, which has reported extensively on the Ashley Biden diary, noted that “Entries in the diary include the author revealing she believes she was sexually molested as a child and shared ‘probably not appropriate’ showers with her father, some that detail the author’s struggle with drug abuse and the author’s crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, along with entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and those that show a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation.”
Despite naming both National File’s reporter Patrick Howley and the legal name of the company that owns National File, the New York Times article does not name National File, nor does the article discuss anything that was contained within the diary itself.
According to National File: “Howley’s website claimed that it had obtained the diary from a whistleblower for a media organization that refused to publish a story about it before the election. The website also claimed to know the whereabouts of the actual diary and that the whistleblower had a recording admitting the diary belonged to her.”
The NY Times article claims that the federal investigators are comprised of FBI agents and “federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters” on behalf of the Southern District of New York. The investigation was seemingly opened by then-Attorney General Bill Barr, after a Biden family representative allegedly reported in October 2020 that the diary, along with “several” of Ashley Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary.
“This is contrary to the information provided to National File by a Project Veritas whistleblower, who explained that the diary was left at an address where Joe Biden’s daughter used to stay,” the National File report noted.
In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett described the investigation by the FBI as “bewildering.”
“Let’s assume it’s a theft or a burglary. That’s not a federal crime! This would be a state crime,” Jarrett said. He further highlighted that when the Biden administration took office, the investigation “should have been handed off to state authorities, because there’s an enormous conflict of interest,” as it involved Biden’s own daughter.
Jarrett also confirmed that journalists “cannot be criminally prosecuted for publishing stolen material unless the journalist himself was involved in the theft.” He concluded by saying the investigation was “deeply troubling,” and that it smacked of being purely “political targeting” against Project Veritas and National File.
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