DOJ investigates ties to Project Veritas in theft of Biden's daughter's diary

Federal agents in New York reportedly searched two Project Veritas-associated locations on Thursday as part of a Justice Department investigation into the theft and subsequent publication of President Biden's daughter's diary just before the 2020 election, The New York Times reports.

The two locations — one in New York City and the other in Westchester County — were reportedly linked to people who had worked with the conservative group and its leader James O'Keefe, according to two individuals with knowledge of the events.

Project Veritas did not publish Biden's daughter diary, but a slew of "handwritten pages were posted on a right wing website" in October of 2020, writes the Times, around the time former President Donald Trump was attempting to paint Hunter Biden as "engaging in corrupt business dealings." The site that did disclose the pages said it received the diary from "a whistle-blower who worked for a media organization that refused to publish a story about it before the election."

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Project Veritas has been known to surreptitiously target Democratic campaigns and organizations, and at one point roped a former British spy named Richard Seddon into its undercover operations, writes the Times. Notably, the company that owns the site that published the diary's pages "is registered to the same [Wyoming] address as [Seddon's] company, Branch Six Consulting International." O'Keefe was also once the president of a company that later registered at that same address.

In New York, a long time Project Veritas operative and "confidante" of O'Keefe's Spencer Meads was living in the NYC apartment searched by the FBI on Thursday.

Agents knocked loudly on Mead's door for 10 minutes before forcing their way inside, a neighbor told the Times. She said agents were yelling, "Spencer, open up!" Read more at The New York Times.