Scrutiny of the FBI’s handling of an investigation into Project Veritas is mounting following the publication of details from documents potentially seized by federal authorities.
The New York Times published an article on Thursday detailing the extent to which operatives from the controversial right-wing investigative group coordinated with attorneys to ensure they did not flout laws dictating private recordings and obtaining information from sources using false pretenses.
The New York Times cited “a series of memos written by the group’s lawyer” in its article questioning Project Veritas’s approach to investigating various targets, including the FBI itself.
FEDERAL COURT ORDERS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT TO STOP EXTRACTING DATA FROM JAMES O’KEEFE’S PHONES
Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney for O’Keefe, stopped short on Thursday of accusing the FBI of unlawfully leaking the documents to the New York Times but said her team is raising the question.
“I can’t say with certainty how the New York Times got this information,” Dhillon said during an appearance on Fox News. “But I can say that they got it in a way that is illegal and unethical.”
Dhillon also accused the FBI of providing New York Times reporters with an illegal tip ahead of the raid on O’Keefe’s New York apartment.
O’Keefe said in a video statement that a New York Times reporter contacted him for comment within an hour of the authorities searching his home.
The timing of the paper’s story about the raid on O’Keefe’s home and the homes of two of his associates, which occurred on Nov. 6, as well as the publication of excerpts from internal Project Veritas documents just days after the raid, has raised questions about how the FBI has handled the investigation.
Dhillon suggested that the Justice Department provided the New York Times with an illegal tip as to when the raid was going to occur.
“As to how The NY Times got the documents, I am not going to speculate,” Dhillon told the Washington Examiner via email. “However, it is very clear to us that the DOJ/FBI tipped off The NY Times to not one, but THREE raids of Project Veritas current and former journalists (two former PV journalists Thursday, one of James O’Keefe Saturday morning).”
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on whether it will investigate how documents potentially related to its investigation were published.
The dispute over the documents comes against the backdrop of a feud between the newspaper and the investigative group, which intensified last year when Project Veritas filed a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in New York’s Supreme Court.
Project Veritas notched a victory in the case earlier this year when a judge rejected the New York Times’s efforts to get the lawsuit thrown out, ruling that the conservative group had presented enough evidence to proceed with its claims.
The group accused the New York Times of covering a pair of its videos negatively due to what it said was the paper’s “vitriolic disdain” for O’Keefe, according to court documents.
O’Keefe’s team successfully stopped the review of data from devices taken during the FBI search in court this week, as he maintains that the federal investigation into his group is an “attack” on his First Amendment rights.
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the DOJ to stop pulling data from phones belonging to O’Keefe, granting his attorney’s request to pause the data extraction while they press to have an independent “special master” appointed to oversee the investigation.
The court ordered the DOJ to confirm via email by Friday that it had stopped reviewing data from O’Keefe’s phones.
The investigation that led to the raid on O’Keefe’s home centers on a missing diary purportedly belonging to Ashley Biden, the daughter of President Joe Biden.
Project Veritas obtained a copy of the diary last year, ahead of the 2020 elections. O’Keefe said the group reviewed the contents of the diary and ultimately decided not to publish any of it; he claimed his organization gave the diary to law enforcement officials last year and also attempted to transfer the diary to a lawyer for Ashley Biden.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
However, pages from the diary surfaced on a right-wing website, National File, less than two weeks before Election Day. The excerpts detailed intensely personal details about Ashley Biden’s relationship with her father, as well her struggles with drug abuse and childhood trauma.
National File claimed to have received the copies of handwritten pages of the diary “from a whistleblower who was concerned the media organization that employs him would not publish this potential critical story in the final 10 days before the 2020 presidential election.”
O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.
