Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians.

In written arguments, lawyers for Project Veritas and OKeefe said the governments investigation seems undertaken not to vindicate any real interests of justice, but rather to stifle the press from investigating the Presidents family.

It is impossible to imagine the government investigating an abandoned diary (or perhaps the other belongings left behind with it), had the diary not been written by someone with the last name Biden, they added.

The judge rejected the First Amendment arguments, saying in the ruling that they were inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent. She also noted that Project Veritas could not claim it was protecting the identity of a confidential source from public disclosure after two individuals publicly pleaded guilty in the case.

She was referencing the August 2022 guilty pleas of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. Both await sentencing.

The pleas came two years after Harris and Kurlander two Florida residents who are not employed by Project Veritas discovered that Ashley Biden, the presidents daughter, had stored items including a diary at a friends Delray Beach, Florida, house.

They said they initially hoped to sell some of the stolen property to then-President Donald Trumps campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, prosecutors say.

Eventually, Project Veritas paid the pair $20,000 apiece to deliver the diary containing highly personal entries, a digital storage card with private family photos, tax documents, clothes and luggage to New York, prosecutors said.

Project Veritas was not charged with any crime. The group has said its activities were newsgathering and were ethical and legal.

Two weeks ago, Hannah Giles, chief executive of Project Veritas, quit her job, saying in a social media post she had stepped into an unsalvageable mess one wrought with strong evidence of past illegality and post financial improprieties. She said shed reported what she found to appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Lichtman said in an email on behalf of Project Veritas and the people whose residences were raided: As for the continued investigation, the government isnt seeking any prison time for either defendant who claims to have stolen the Ashley Biden diary, which speaks volumes in our minds.

See the article here:

First Amendment claim struck down in Project Veritas case focused on diary of Biden's daughter - POLITICO