Newly released video shows the frantic first moments of the FBI pounding on the door of a Project Veritas journalist as they served a search warrant on his home in connection to the investigation into the stolen diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley.
‘FBI open up!’ an agent can be heard shouting at the unidentified male journalist on the jumpy video. ‘This is a search warrant. Open up.’
The footage taken in November 2021, and was shared by Project Veritas for the first time on Wednesday. It was described by Donald Trump Jr. as an ‘unconstitutional pre-dawn raid’ on the journalist’s home.
‘Let me see your hands, let me see your hands,’ the agent shouts and the chilling sound of a weapon being cocked can be heard on the recording.
Agents wearing ball caps, face masks and bullet proof vests with FBI written in bright yellow lettering begin to paw through the reporter’s home in the footage, shining their flashlights in his face as they tell him why they’re there.
He tells the reporter that an agent is going to chaperone him while the rest get to work.
‘Understand here [inaudible] for our safety and yours we’re going to have him sit with you,’ an agent explains to the scribe as the other agents go about tossing the home.
The agent goes on to tell the journalist that he doesn’t have to sit with the agent, and he’s not being detained.
‘We want to see you calm, you know,’ the agent says. ‘Are you comfortable with that.’
The shaken journalist just says, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
Open closets and cupboards are wide open in the background and one agent seems to be sifting through the journalist’s pantry looking for the First Daughter’s stolen journal.
‘There’s another team coming,’ the agent can be heard saying, his embroidered FBI logo clearly visible in the recording. ‘So, maybe we’ll spread into [inaudible] areas of the house.’
The FBI hit the homes of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, who was a waken in his Westchester County, New York home in his underwear to the federal lawmen, and another of the organization’s journalists
‘The government’s invasion of our First Amendment rights should send shivers down the spine of every journalists in the country,’ O’Keefe said of the raid.
He said that federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and the FBI targeted Project Veritas because of its investigative journalism.
O’Keefe maintains that his organization lawfully obtained the diary of Ashley Biden, which had entries about her father, who was running for president at the time.
The ACLU, the Society for Professional Journalists, the Committee to Protect the Press, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Freedom of the Press Foundation all denounced the raids on the organization’s staff.
William Barr, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, was the US Attorney General at the time.
‘What you have seen is an attempt to intimidate us and silence us as journalists,’ O’Keefe says. ‘Project Veritas will never be silenced.’
Project Veritas did not publish the handwritten diary, as O’Keefe said in a video released Tuesday that the group worked with local law enforcement to return the journal. Previously, O’Keefe had said he did not publish because he could not confirm the authenticity of the diary, its belonging to Ashley Biden or that the contents of the diary were truthful.
The diary was obtained by Project Veritas just a week before the 2020 Presidential Election. It says it obtained the diary from a ‘tipster’ who’d obtained it after staying in a location that Ashley Biden had previously visited.
Project Veritas bills itself as a journalism nonprofit, and uses undercover tactics to expose mainstream media bias against conservatives.
The investigation, ordered by the Department of Justice (DOJ), was carried out by both federal investigators and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to the New York Times.
This is an excerpt from Daily Mail.
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