{"id":1002281,"date":"2021-11-12T08:58:33","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T13:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1002281"},"modified":"2021-11-12T08:58:36","modified_gmt":"2021-11-12T13:58:36","slug":"new-york-times-attacks-project-veritas-james-okeefe-for-using-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/new-york-times-attacks-project-veritas-james-okeefe-for-using-lawyers\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times Attacks Project Veritas, James O&#039;Keefe for Using Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fnew-york-times-attacks-project-veritas-james-okeefe-for-using-lawyers%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1002281&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/JamesOKeefeACORNDoc.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">The&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em> published an article Thursday in which it attempted to cast suspicion on James O\u2019Keefe and his Project Veritas for using lawyers to keep investigations within legal bounds, something every news organization does, or should do.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> has its own legal team that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/19\/reader-center\/david-mccraw-times-counsel-lawyer.html\">reviews stories<\/a> and advises reporters and editors on how to avoid libel suits. But the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> uses the fact that Project Veritas hires lawyers to case aspersions on its reporting, calling it a form of \u201cpolitical spying.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<p>The&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/11\/us\/politics\/project-veritas-journalism-political-spying.html\">based<\/a> its reporting on legal memos obtained from Project Veritas\u2019s lawyers:<\/p>\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\" readability=\"11\">\n<blockquote readability=\"15\">\n<p class=\"css-axufdj evys1bk0\">The documents, a series of memos written by the group\u2019s lawyer, detail ways for Project Veritas sting operations \u2014 which typically diverge from standard journalistic practice by employing people who mask their real identities or create fake ones to infiltrate target organizations \u2014 to avoid breaking federal statutes such as the law against lying to government officials.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-axufdj evys1bk0\">\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The legal documents obtained by The Times were written several years ago, at a time when Project Veritas was remaking itself from a small operation running on a shoestring budget to a group more closely modeled on a small intelligence-gathering organization.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<p>Though it does not say whether the memos were leaked from law enforcement or the company, the leak comes after a controversial FBI raid on O\u2019Keefe\u2019s home.<\/p>\n<p>Notably, one of the journalists who worked on the times story is&nbsp;Michael S. Schmidt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the supposed link between President Donald Trump and Russia \u2014 a link that was later shown not to exist. Many of the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> stories relied on leaks from law enforcement and intelligence agencies, which falsely suggested \u201cRussia collusion.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>The raid concerned a diary purportedly belonging to President Joe Biden\u2019s daughter, Ashley Biden, which Project Veritas says it turned over to police and did not use in news coverage. (Liberal legal scholar Jonathan Turley <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanturley.org\/2021\/11\/07\/fbi-raids-project-veritas-over-a-missing-biden-diary\/#more-180353\">called<\/a> the basis for the raid into question, noting that it looked suspiciously like a government attempt to intimidate and suppress critical media, and noted that other media outlets had been curiously silent in Project Veritas\u2019s defense, barely raising questions about the raid.)<\/p>\n<p>Critics of the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> article noted that the newspaper \u2014 and its sources \u2014 might have violated O\u2019Keefe\u2019s legal rights:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\" readability=\"10.321678321678\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The FBI is leaking attorney-client privileged files to a party adverse to Project Veritas in a civil lawsuit. <\/p>\n<p>This is not a grey area. <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s black letter criminal felonies committed by the FBI and the New York Times. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Kgx98JWz5d\">https:\/\/t.co\/Kgx98JWz5d<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Cernovich (@Cernovich) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Cernovich\/status\/1458971918988562435?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 12, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Technically, attorney-client privilege applies to communications from the client to the lawyer, not the other way around, though it could apply in this case if the lawyers cited communications from the client in their memos. Moreover, the \u201cwork product\u201d doctrine prevents opposing counsel from obtaining materials an attorney has prepared in advising a client.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> notes that \u201cProject Veritas is suing The New York Times over a 2020 story about a video the group made alleging voter fraud in Minnesota.\u201d That raises questions about whether the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> article violated work product doctrine.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>Others raised more basic concerns about privacy and the freedom of the press, which the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> seemed to cast aside:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\" readability=\"11.793696275072\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The Executive Director of <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FreedomofPress?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@FreedomofPress<\/a> on why the DOJ targeting of Project Veritas and James O&#8217;Keefe is so &#8220;worrying from a press freedom perspective,&#8221; at least unless there is evidence of actual criminality.<\/p>\n<p>Though rare, it&#8217;s actually not that hard to apply principles: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2jkItecf28\">https:\/\/t.co\/2jkItecf28<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ggreenwald\/status\/1458792193540435970?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 11, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>On Thursday, O\u2019Keefe won a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2021\/11\/12\/court-halts-doj-extraction-of-james-okeefes-smartphone-data\/\">reprieve<\/a> in court when a federal judge granted a hearing for his request for a \u201cspecial master\u201d who would review materials seized by the FBI for possibly privileged material before allowing the government to use it. The judge ordered the Department of Justice to stop extracting data from O\u2019Keefe\u2019s smartphone until the matter is resolved.<\/p>\n<p>Criticizing a disfavored target for the mere fact that he or she has used an attorney has become a favored tactic of the left. President Donald Trump was literally impeached, for the first time, for the fact that he went to court to protect the legal privilege of communications with counsel. Earlier this week, the prosecutor in the Kyle Rittenhouse case attempted to impugn the reliability of a witness by noting he had a lawyer \u2014 a tactic immediately shut down by the judge in the case.<\/p>\n<p><em>Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of <\/em>Breitbart News Sunday<em> on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neither-Free-nor-Fair-Presidential-ebook\/dp\/B08PNN54BB\">Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election<\/a>. His recent book, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.centerstreet.com\/titles\/joel-b-pollak\/red-november\/9781546099840\/\">RED NOVEMBER<\/a><em>, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at <a class=\"x5l\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/joelpollak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener external\">@joelpollak<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0New York Times published an article Thursday in which it attempted to cast suspicion on James O\u2019Keefe and his Project Veritas for using lawyers to keep investigations within legal bounds, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1002281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}