In the wake of a shock predawn raid targeting journalist and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, legitimate concerns are being raised about the autonomy of a FBI that has been on the warpath searching for a diary that reportedly belonged to President Joe Biden’s daughter.
“There were 10 FBI agents with a battering ram… they turned me around, handcuffed me, and threw me against the hallway,” O’Keefe told Fox News.
“I was partially clothed in front of my neighbors,” he said concerning the raid. “They confiscated my phone, they raided my apartment. On my phone were many of my reporter’s notes, a lot of my sources unrelated to this story, and a lot of confidential donor information to our news organization.”
It was the latest in a series of raids that the FBI has carried out at the homes of former Project Veritas journalists, all reportedly hunting for a diary supposedly belonging to Biden’s daughter, Ashley.
The ordeal started in late 2020, when O’Keefe said Project Veritas received a tip about a diary that had been discovered in a room that Ashley Biden stayed in. The diary allegedly contained “explosive allegations” against Joe Biden.
Because Project Veritas could not verify the validity of the diary, O’Keefe said, they made the conscious choice not to publish it. Project Veritas then gave the diary to authorities.
“Although the contents were never published, nor were the claims of their accuracy proven, the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of New York is now conducting an investigation and claiming the diary had been stolen from Ashley,” O’Keefe said.
“Whether or not the diary was stolen, however, is unknown to Project Veritas since they purchased it from tipsters, then handed it over to law enforcement,” he said.
That hasn’t stopped the FBI from coming after O’Keefe, raising concerns that the federal law agency might be acting at the direction, or least tacit encouragement, of Biden.
“Why would the FBI be coming in on this?” asked George Washington University law professor Jonathon Turley
“Project Veritas said it didn’t run the information and notified local enforcement,” Turley said. “So there is a legitimate concern when the FBI becomes involved in this type of story, as to whether it is going outside of those navigational beacons that we use to judge whether they are acting independently.”
O’Keefe shared that concern, asserting that it appeared “journalism itself may now be on trial.”
“In what world,” he asked, “is the alleged theft of a diary investigated by the President’s FBI and his Department of Justice?”
