The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it would not bring charges against anyone affiliated with the group Project Veritas over their role in trying to publish the contents of a diary that had been stolen from Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter in the final weeks of the 2020 election campaign.
The prosecutors, who made their announcement in a one-paragraph letter to a judge overseeing the matter, did not say why they were declining to bring additional charges in the long running investigation. In court filings in related cases, the Justice Department had laid out evidence of the group’s involvement in the effort to acquire and publish the diary, and had fought in court for access to evidence that investigators had obtained from the group’s operatives.
The investigation had raised difficult legal questions about the extent to which the First Amendment protected the publication of stolen materials. But it was unclear whether the decision was part of a larger pattern by the Justice Department since President Trump took office to walk away from cases involving his allies. Project Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe, have long been favorites of Mr. Trump’s and gained attention by using sting operations and undercover videos to seek to embarrass liberal groups and mainstream news organizations, among others.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. O’Keefe, who left Project Veritas two years ago amid accusations by the group’s board that he had misspent donor money, praised the decision in a post on X and portrayed himself as a victim of government overreach. In the post, Mr. O’Keefe included a video of his lawyer saying that it was highly unusual for the government to conduct a grand jury investigation, like the one into Mr. O’Keefe and Project Veritas, and not to bring charges.
“It certainly has happened to me probably 10 times in 30-plus years — it’s not very common,” the lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said on the video.
The investigation started in the final days of the 2020 campaign when federal prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan began examining how the group had obtained a diary that Mr. Biden’s daughter Ashley had kept. The group then tried to publicize the diary’s contents in an attempt to undermine Mr. Biden’s candidacy.
During the investigation, court filings in the case said, the authorities learned that Project Veritas had paid for the diary. The investigation also found that a member of the group had asked that individuals who had facilitated the sale of the diary to the group steal additional items from a home where Ms. Biden had been staying to help authenticate it.
In 2021, F.B.I. agents with warrants searched the homes of several Project Veritas operatives. In response, members of the group went to court trying to stop federal prosecutors from using the evidence, setting off the yearslong court battle.
About a year later, two people pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in stealing the diary and selling it to the group. One of those individuals, Robert Kurlander, had his sentencing delayed on Wednesday until May.
Since leaving Project Veritas, Mr. O’Keefe has started a new group that operates in a similar fashion to Project Veritas.
The post Justice Dept. Says It Will Not Bring Charges in Investigation of Project Veritas appeared first on New York Times.
