The FBI has conducted searches of at least two New York locations tied to the conservative investigative group Project Veritas, reportedly in connection with the alleged theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, the youngest daughter of President Joe Biden.
“I awoke to the news that apartments and homes of Project Veritas journalists, or former journalists, had been raided by FBI agents,” Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe said in a statement posted on his website on Friday. “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. Or at least, this journalist.”
Federal agents reportedly searched two locations tied to O’Keefe’s group “as part of an investigation into how a diary stolen from President Biden’s daughter, Ashley, came to be publicly disclosed a week and a half before the 2020 presidential election.”
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The New York Times said then-Attorney General William Barr “opened an investigation into the matter shortly after a representative of the Biden family reported to federal authorities in October 2020 that several of Ms. Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary.” The outlet claimed “one of the people briefed on the case” said that “in recent weeks, federal investigators have reached out to at least one person who worked for Project Veritas to question that person about the diary.”
An FBI spokesperson would say only that the bureau had “performed law enforcement activity related to an ongoing investigation” at two different locations, one in Manhattan and the other in Mamaroneck, Westchester County.
A right-wing outlet called the National File published dozens of pages of 40-year-old Ashley Biden’s purported diary in October 2020, with the handwritten pages covering a number of salacious, personal topics. The outlet said at the time it “has obtained what a whistleblower has identified as a copy of the complete diary” belonging to Biden’s daughter with first lady Jill Biden, as well as an audio recording of Ashley Biden, “admitting this is her diary.”
O’Keefe said Friday, “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.
“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.”
O’Keefe added, “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. 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.”
He continued, “Now, Ms. Biden’s Father’s Department of Justice, specifically the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, appears to be investigating the situation, claiming the diary was stolen.”
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Ashley Biden has come under less scrutiny than her half-brother, Hunter, whose laptop was abandoned at a repair shop in April 2019, according to John Paul Mac Isaac, the store’s owner. The laptop and hard drive were seized by the FBI through a grand jury subpoena in December 2019. Rudy Giuliani, the then-personal lawyer to Trump, obtained a copy of the hardware’s contents, and the data was shared with various media outlets. Hunte has reportedly been under criminal investigation as far back as 2018 as federal authorities scrutinize his taxes and foreign business dealings.
