FBI searches O’Keefe’s home in Biden diary theft inquiry
Federal authorities Saturday searched the home of James O’Keefe, founder of the conservative group Project Veritas, according to witnesses and people briefed on the matter, a day after O’Keefe acknowledged that the group was under investigation by the Justice Department in connection with a diary reported to have been stolen from Ashley Biden, President Joe Biden’s daughter.
The FBI carried out a court-ordered search of O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, New York, early Saturday, after having searched the homes of two associates of O’Keefe on Thursday as part of the investigation.
An FBI spokesperson Saturday said that agents had “performed law enforcement activity” at the building but would not discuss the investigation.
O’Keefe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday. But in a video statement Friday, he said that his group had recently received a grand jury subpoena and acknowledged that Project Veritas had been involved in discussions with sources last year about the diary.
Brent Mickol, a teacher who lives across the hall from O’Keefe, said it was about 6 a.m. when agents arrived. Mickol said the agents said “something along the lines of ‘FBI warrant. Open up.’ ”
“I ran to the door and looked out the peephole and clearly saw an FBI raid,” he said. “You saw the jackets. Literally, it was just out of a movie.”
In his video statement, O’Keefe offered a lengthy defense of his group’s handling of the diary, saying that he and his colleagues had been operating as ethical journalists, had turned the diary over to law enforcement authorities last year and had sought to return it to a lawyer for Ashley Biden.
Project Veritas did not publish Ashley Biden’s diary, but dozens of handwritten pages from it were posted on a right-wing website last year.
The Trump administration’s Justice Department, then led by Attorney General William Barr, opened an investigation into the matter shortly after a representative of the Biden family reported to federal authorities in October 2020 that several of Ashley Biden’s personal items had been stolen in a burglary, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Thursday, federal authorities searched the residence in New York of Spencer Meads, a longtime Project Veritas operative and confidant of O’Keefe, and an apartment in Mamaroneck linked to another O’Keefe associate.