Samuel Case, FISM News
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Project Veritas is alleging that newly disclosed Microsoft legal documents show that the Department of Justice spied on its journalists’ emails as part of its investigation into Ashley Biden’s missing diary that culminated in an FBI raid on the homes of several Project Veritas journalists, including Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe in November.
BREAKING: DOJ Spied on Journalists’ Emails Via Sealed Search Warrants & Non-Disclosure Orders
Microsoft’s Legal Docs Reveal How DOJ Repeatedly Concealed Possession of Privileged Communications from Federal Judge#BidenDiary https://t.co/icPW4wnt9T
— Christian Hartsock (@Chris_Hartsock) March 22, 2022
In an exposé released Monday, Project Veritas asserts that these documents reveal that “President Biden’s Department of Justice filed a series of secret warrants, orders, and a subpoena to surreptitiously collect privileged, and constitutionally protected, communications and contacts of eight Project Veritas journalists from Microsoft Corporation.” The DOJ put a gag-order on Microsoft, preventing the company from disclosing these actions.
The organization says the Biden DOJ “went behind U.S. District Court Judge, Analisa Torres, back” who had previously “ruled Project Veritas was entitled to ‘journalistic privileges’” and ordered a pause on its review of O’Keefe’s devices.
Furthermore, “the DOJ has not publicly disclosed the orders, warrants, or subpoenas to Judge Torres or Special Master Judge Barbara Jones – who was appointed by Judge Torres to protect Veritas’ ‘journalistic privileges’ from potential DOJ overreach,” according to the expose.
Torres ruled that the DOJ may not “review any materials seized from Project Veritas without Judge Jones’ approval,” but the DOJ failed to seek approval from Jones to review the Microsoft material.
Project Veritas asserts that “the surveillance culminated in a search warrant seeking every email sent to or from Project Veritas founder and CEO, James O’Keefe, for a three-month period, along with every contact he had ever saved.”
Project Veritas is now filing a motion “demanding the federal government disclose if it engaged in covert spying” by “secretly demanding production” of “protected materials from any other businesses, like Microsoft,” according to O’Keefe.
O’Keefe says the documents collected from the email accounts date back to eight months before Project Veritas was aware of the existence of the Ashley Biden diary, which was said to have gone missing before the 2020 Presidential election.
Project Veritas paid a tipster for the publishing rights of the diary but chose not to release its contents as they were unable to verify its authenticity. O’Keefe’s attorney says the diary was handed over to “local law enforcement.”