Feds search Project Veritas in Biden daughter's stolen diary probe

Federal authorities have conducted searches at two locations in New York as part of an investigation into whether individuals linked to Project Veritas, a conservative political group, were involved in obtaining and disclosing parts of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley.

The searches were first reported by the New York Times, which said federal agents conducted the court-ordered searches on Thursday — one in New York City and one in suburban Westchester County — targeting people who had worked with Project Veritas and its leader, James O’Keefe. It said the investigation was being handled by FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Manhattan who work on public corruption matters.

On Friday, the FBI confirmed it had engaged in "law enforcement activity" at two locations in New York on Thursday. But the agency declined to provide details about the nature of its investigation or to say whether the activity involved Project Veritas, an opposition research group with a history of targeting Democrats.

After the story posted, O'Keefe released a video in which he confirmed the searches and said Project Veritas had been involved in discussions with sources about the diary. He said the investigation was politically motivated, that no one in his organization had done anything wrong and that the group would ultimately be vindicated.

In his video, O’Keefe said apartments and homes of Project Veritas employees “had been raided by FBI agents.”

“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 reference to the Manhattan-based prosecutors. “Or at least, this journalist.”

“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,” he added later in the video.

O’Keefe, a controversial conservative political activist, said Project Veritas never published anything from the diary, which Ashley Biden reported as one of several items stolen during a burglary last October. Details from her diary were later published by a conservative website, including handwritten pages taken directly from the diary itself.

In his video, O’Keefe said Project Veritas was approached by tipsters late last year who claimed they had found a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary “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.”

“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,” O’Keefe said. He also claimed that Project Veritas attempted to return the diary to an attorney representing Ashley Biden but the attorney refused to authenticate it.

“Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner,” O’Keefe said. “We never published it.”

O’Keefe said in his video that Project Veritas had received a subpoena in connection with the matter, and that he was asked by the federal government not to talk about it.

“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,” O’Keefe said.

Project Veritas, which has become infamous for its surreptitious efforts to videotape perceived opponents saying embarrassing things, maintains that it is an investigative media outlet and that its employees are journalists. But one federal judge ruled last October that Project Veritas’ opponents were free to portray the group as a "political spying operation" and could question O’Keefe about its conduct in those terms. That case is a civil matter.

In its story, the New York Times said that federal investigators have contacted at least one person who worked for Project Veritas in recent weeks to question that individual about the diary. According to the Times, the website that published pages from Ashley Biden’s diary is owned by a media company that has at least some indirect connections to O’Keefe, as well as a former British spy who helped train Project Veritas’ operatives.

Joseph Garrison contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Feds search Project Veritas in probe of Ashley Biden's stolen diary