According to reports, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York ruled in favor of a special master's recommendation that Project Veritas be forced to turn over all documents in its possession revealing how the investigative journalism group obtained the diary back in late 2020.
In its defense, Project Veritas tried to argue that it holds journalist non-disclosure privileges under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, protecting said documents concerning the diary from having to be turned over to the criminal justice system. Judge Torres ultimately ruled otherwise.
What this now means for Project Veritas is that it could soon have to turn over more than 900 documents showing how it obtained Ashley Biden's diary. Judge Torres also wants a government evidentiary filter team to sort out the documents in order to determine which ones are not protected under attorney-client privilege, ordering that these be submitted by Project Veritas to government investigators by no later than Jan. 5, 2024.
(Related: In early 2023, Project Veritas unleashed evidence showing that Pfizer carried out illegal gain-of-function research in developing its mRNA COVID "vaccine.")
What happened to freedom of the press?
The saga of this ongoing legal battle first began in the fall of 2021 when federal agents executed search warrants at the homes of several Project Veritas employees, including group founder and former CEO James O'Keefe.
The records seized during those raids should be returned to Project Veritas, the group is arguing, citing its First Amendment rights as a legitimate press organization.
Many would argue that Project Veritas is one of the only truly investigative journalistic operations still in existence in America, doing the dirty work that none of the big guys in corporate media would ever dare to touch.
Citing past legal precedents, Project Veritas says it is a constitutionally protected news organization that is immune from liability concerning the publishing of information, regardless of how that information was originally procured.
As a little background, Judge Torres was appointed for former President Barack Obama, which adds some context concerning her apparent animosity towards Project Veritas and its operational format.
According to Judge Torres, the past precedents cited by Project Veritas do not protect the news organization in this particular case because federal prosecutors are treating Project Veritas as an active participant in the "theft" of Ashley Biden's diary, meaning it was illegally obtained, in Judge Torres' opinion.
"The Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects the publication of information by a 'law-abiding possessor of information,' even if the publisher received the information from a source who obtained it unlawfully," Judge Torres wrote in her ruling.
"Here, the Government is investigating whether [Project Veritas and its members] participated in the theft of the Victim's journal and the other items."
Cited by The Epoch Times as an "alleged" diary, the materials obtained by Project Veritas that are being referred to as Ashley Biden's diary were first discovered by defendants Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander.
Federal charging documents state that "an immediate family member of a then-former government official who was a candidate for national political office" had been storing the diary at a private residence in Delray Beach, Fla.
Referring to Harris and Kurlander as "A.H." and "R.K.," Project Veritas says these are the two people who first approached the news organization about the diary, asserting all the while that it was not stolen but simply abandoned by Ashley Biden.
"Project Veritas had no involvement with how those two individuals acquired the diary," stated Paul Calli, an attorney representing Project Veritas, about the case. "All of Project Veritas's knowledge about how R.K. and A.H. came to possess the diary came from R.K. and A.H. themselves."
Will the Biden Crime Family ever be held accountable for its many alleged crimes? Find out more at Treason.news.
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