James O’Keefe Describes FBI Raid on His Home Over Ashley Biden Diary as “Attack on the First Amendment”
“journalists everywhere have to rise up because we broke no laws here. If they can do it to me, they’ll do it to anybody”
James O’Keefe appeared on the Sean Hannity show last night with his attorney to discuss the FBI raid on his home over the Ashley Biden diary.
He described the situation as an attack on the First Amendment and suggested it’s all being motivated by politics.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn reports at FOX News:
Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe speaks out after FBI raided home: ‘This is an attack on the First Amendment’
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe appeared on “Hannity” for his first interview since the FBI raided his home on Saturday morning as part of a federal investigation into the missing diary of President Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
“I woke up to a pre-dawn raid,” O’Keefe told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday. “Banging on my door, I went to my door to answer the door and there were ten FBI agents with a battering ram, white blinding lights, they turned me around, handcuffed me and threw me against the hallway. I was partially clothed in front of my neighbors. They confiscated my phone. They raided my apartment. On my phone were many of my reporters’ notes. A lot of my sources unrelated to this story and a lot of confidential donor information to our news organization.”
“I’ve heard ‘the process is the punishment.’ I didn’t really understand what that meant until this weekend. And Sean, I wouldn’t wish this on any journalist,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe said he was “in a state of shock” as FBI agents spent over two hours searching his apartment, telling Hannity they took two of his iPhones…
“This is an attack on the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” O’Keefe said. “I’m calling upon all journalists to take a stand against this. A source comes to us with information, I didn’t even decide to publish it. If they can do this to me, if they can do it to this journalist and raid my home and take my reporter notes, they’ll do it to any journalist. This is about something very fundamental in this country. I don’t know which direction this country is going in. But journalists everywhere have to rise up because we broke no laws here. If they can do it to me, they’ll do it to anybody.”
Watch the segment below:
The New York Post editorial board has the right take on this:
This sure looks like Biden’s DOJ persecuting an opposition journalist
You don’t have to be a fan of James O’Keefe’s style of journalism to be worried about how the government is reacting to it…
Journalists can’t be prosecuted for publishing stolen material unless they were part of the theft. And the theft in question hardly seems to rise to a federal crime.
And shield laws normally mean law enforcement can’t make reporters reveal a thing about their sources, even if they didn’t publish anything.
Journalists regularly publish material that has been leaked or even taken — consider the Times running President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Unless the feds know something about Veritas sanctioning the burglary, the diary does not warrant pre-dawn raids. It has all the marks of a political vendetta.
During Trump’s presidency, the media lived on sensitive, leaked documents and unverified reports. O’Keefe did the responsible thing by not reporting on this unverified story and got raided by the FBI.
Featured image via FOX News video.
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Comments
On what basis was the warrant executed? Would not any affidavits by the FBI and the US Attorney be available for public review and comment?
Same thing happened to Dennis Cain, the whistleblower on the Clinton Foundation. The search warrant remains sealed.
.
Under the law, the FBI must make a return on the warrant showing what was seized. Normally the search warrant affidavit becomes public unless sealed by a judge.
Any bets what will happen in this case?
Has anyone seen the search warrant affidavit for the search of Epstein’s town house?
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/debra-heine/2019/01/28/clinton-appointed-judge-refuses-to-unseal-documents-pertaining-to-raid-on-alleged-clinton-foundation-whistleblower-n63403
This is about his Pfizer/Hospital/Facebook whistleblower pieces.
They clearly are powerful.
It appears as though we’re actually at war.
If they can do it to me, they’ll do it to anybody
Well, no. Because those people will all kowtow to their priests (the technocrats) and not dare expose them in any way. So, no, it won’t happen to them. They’ll always be good little sycophants.
Well, at least until one of their peers/underlings decides the easiest way to get ahead is to denounce them and have them feels to the wolves, while said former peer/underling moves into their old digs….
WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA
WELCOME TO THE NEW AMERICA
If you were in a coma the last 6 or 7 years and just woke up, here is an update on what you missed:
1. You’ll never be woke enough (maybe go back to the coma)
2. You live in a totalitarian state
3. Media have different names but, with few exceptions, report the same propaganda.
4. If you have kids, they will likely have been indoctrinated by now to an anti-Americanism, Pro-Marxism, Race-central, gender confused set of beliefs.
5. The country you knew is gone – the borders are wide open. Only dumb schmucks wait for legal entry to the USA now.
6. 40% or more of the population have been convinced that defunding and eliminating police and prisons is a good idea by media propaganda (see point #3 above).
7. The western world shut down for nearly 2 years due to a pandemic that killed 5+ million world-wide.
8. Trump was elected president but was not reelected because Biden defeated him in an irregular election where election rules were changed due to the pandemic and media went all-in to support Biden and denigrate Trump.
9. In less than a year Biden f*cked up the whole country, give ew meaning to Obama’s comment – “never underestimate Biden’s ability to f*ck things up”
10. Biden made a hasty retreat from Afghanistan and it turned into a debacle of gigantic proportion. Such that the term “Cluster F*ck” was the most used term in August and September 2021.
11. FBI has morphed into the KGB. Journalists who do not toe the party line are subject to surveillance and raids in the early morning hours.
12. FBI has been directed by Biden’s DOJ to investigate Parents who are unruly at school board meeting as the object to indoctrination of their kids.
13. A small segment of the population, about 0.003%, now tell the other 99.997% how to greet each other (you must use pronouns the counter-party wants). They have convinced about 25% of the population to faithfully enforce their edicts – they call those people “allies”. Also, all other language and culture around gender and relations between the sexes are revised at-will by this group. They control what you can say or think on gender issues and you must agree with any of their ideas – no matter how crazy – or they will cancel you – meaning get you fired from your job and have you be socially shunned. For example, you must believe that males can have babies and breastfeed and you must believe that biological males can compete as females in women’s sports. Also women are not “women” anymore – they are “menstruators.”. Please be sure to adopt this new language or customs or else you will be punished.
Recall they did this during the Obama years to journalists being critical of the regime. 5 am door smashings and then taking all computers/hard drives.
#8 is wrong!
Trump won, the election was stolen!
So which is it?
The Democrats Law Enforcement is looking for fake news?
Or
The diary is real?
Did they believe that Joe could be blackmailed, for what?
That said, third-party, and not even published. To be consistent, all third-parties (e.g. WaPo a la Watergate, CNN a la dossier, NYT a la diverse handmade tales) should have their business and private homes invaded… investigated.
The good news here is that the FBI has now confirmed that the diary is legit.
Which means now journalists could start asking about it. I’m seeing just a bit of a feisty attitude in a few of the White House press corps members, so perhaps, just maybe, someone will ask about this. The FBI has legitimized the story.
I have all the sympathy in the world for O’Keefe, I think he’s one of the best things this country has going with us, but please, let’s not hear this nonsense that the news industry has invented, that it has some special place in the constitution, and some special rights that the rest of us don’t have. If it’s legal to execute a warrant on anyone else (and it is) then it must be equally legal to do so to a news industry worker. They’re not special.
The “freedom of speech and of the press” simply means that each of us has the right to express our thoughts, both in speech and in print. That’s all. The so-called right to gather news, that the courts have come up with, is in the constitution right next to the right to abortion.
That said, this FBI investigation stinks from the top to the bottom; even if O’Keefe had personally broken into Ms Biden’s bedroom and stolen her diary, that would be a case for the local police of wherever it happened, not for the FBI.
I feel obligated to point out that the problem with the FBI isn’t isolated to FBI leadership, the so-called 8th floor of the Hoover Building. Instead, it’s institutionalized rot. Here we have at least a dozen agents – men and women who presumably swore an oath the Constitution not an oath of fealty to any politician or political organization – who agreed to be party to a pre-dawn raid of a journalist all over a – checks notes – misplaced diary. Are you effing kidding me?
De-fund the FBI. They’re not protectors of civil liberties. They’re enforcers of a political agenda. Jack-booted thugs have got nothin’ on these clowns.
BTW, where are the GOP Senators. Have any of them issued statements on this outrageous assault on the First Amendment?
No. And they won’t. I’m reasonably sure the FBI still keeps dossiers on all politicians, just like in Hoover’s day. And, if the politician is in fact clean, the fibbies do wonders with technology and can fake up evidence in the blink of a eye.
Journalists won’t rise up about this because they support dawn raids and persecution of non-Left reporters.
“..They confiscated my phone. They raided my apartment. On my phone were many of my reporters’ notes. A lot of my sources unrelated to this story and a lot of confidential donor information to our news organization.”
Intimidation is a fine theory, and this pretext about Ashley Biden’s diary is clearly thin soup, but the real value of this raid is in ruining Project Veritas’s investigations. If the FBI can discover O’Keefe’s sources, investigations, and undercover reporters out in the field then someone can put a stop to Project Veritas’s effectiveness.