{"id":1160335,"date":"2021-12-27T09:34:18","date_gmt":"2021-12-27T14:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1160335"},"modified":"2021-12-27T09:34:20","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T14:34:20","slug":"judge-orders-new-york-times-to-return-james-okeefes-legal-memos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/judge-orders-new-york-times-to-return-james-okeefes-legal-memos\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Orders New York Times to Return James O&#039;Keefe&#039;s Legal Memos"},"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%2Fjudge-orders-new-york-times-to-return-james-okeefes-legal-memos%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=1160335&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\" alt=\"image\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">A New York judge ordered the&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em> Friday to return and destroy all copies it possessed of legal memoranda prepared for James O\u2019Keefe\u2019s investigative journalism company, Project Veritas, saying it had violated his rights.<\/p>\n<p>The memos were described extensively by the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> in a November <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/11\/11\/us\/politics\/project-veritas-journalism-political-spying.html\">article<\/a>&nbsp;about how O\u2019Keefe\u2019s lawyers advised the company to stay within the boundaries of the law in conducting their work. The publication was unusual, both because it came after the FBI had conducted a bizarre raid on O\u2019Keefe\u2019s home looking for information about Ashley Biden\u2019s diary, and because the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> is currently involved in defending against a defamation lawsuit by O\u2019Keefe brought in New York.<\/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> had originally published the memos in full on its website, before removing the link but retaining the article.<\/p>\n<p>As Breitbart News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/the-media\/2021\/11\/18\/judge-orders-new-york-times-to-defend-publishing-james-okeefe-legal-memos\/\">reported<\/a>&nbsp;at the time, the legal memos could be protected by attorney-client privilege. And&nbsp;Judge Charles D. Wood of the Supreme Court of Westchester County <a href=\"https:\/\/iapps.courts.state.ny.us\/fbem\/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=SgQ8IEENXxhU2D4NlHEZHw==&amp;system=prod\">ruled<\/a> on Christmas Eve that they were, and that the First Amendment rights of the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> to publish information did not mean that it could violate O\u2019Keefe\u2019s right to private communications with his attorney, a right that predates the Constitution and that could only be breached for \u201cstrong public policy considerations.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moreover, the judge found that O\u2019Keefe\u2019s lawyers had established that the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> had obtained the legal memos through \u201cirregular\u201d means. Though the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> had not revealed exactly how it obtained the memos, it had admitted \u2014 \u201cincredibly,\u201d the judge opined \u2014 that \u201cno&nbsp;<strong><em>apparent<\/em><\/strong> bribery \u2026 was used to obtain the memoranda\u201d (original emphasis). And having O\u2019Keefe\u2019s memos, even about other matters, gave the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> an unfair advantage in litigation, \u201cunquestionably\u201d prejudicing the proceeding against him.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>Judge Wood noted that preventing the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> from retaining the memos, and possibly publishing information from them, was a form of \u201cprior restraint\u201d on free speech, which is normally not allowed under the First Amendment. However, in this case, the material was protected by the attorney-client privilege and there was no connection to any matter of public concern, he ruled.<\/p>\n<p>While declining to sanction the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em>\u2018 attorneys for violating ethical rules, the judge granted most of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s requests. Within ten days, the judge said, the <em>Times<\/em> was&nbsp;required it to return all of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s legal memos, including those given to third parties, to his attorneys and destroy all copies, physical and electronic, in its control. The judge also barred the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> from using the legal memos for \u201cany purposes whatsoever,\u201d including further news reporting and litigation.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em>\u2018 editorial board responded angrily in an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/12\/24\/opinion\/project-veritas-new-york-times.html\">editorial<\/a> Friday evening titled \u201cA Dangerous Court Order Against the New York Times.\u201d It protested against \u201ca highly unusual and astonishingly broad injunction against a news organization,\u201d and said that the question of whether to publish privileged information did not belong to the judiciary: \u201c[T]he First Amendment is meant to leave those ethical decisions to journalists, not to courts.\u201d It ignored the issue of O\u2019Keefe\u2019s own constitutional rights.<\/p>\n<p>In a critical response to the <em>Times<\/em>,&nbsp;George Washington University legal scholar Jonathan Turley <a href=\"https:\/\/jonathanturley.org\/2021\/12\/26\/ashley-bidens-diary-will-the-fbi-raid-the-new-york-times\/\">asked<\/a>, tongue-in-cheek, whether the FBI should raid the home of&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> publisher A.G. Sulzberger, given that the&nbsp;<em>Times<\/em> had warned O\u2019Keefe that it had the memos and would publish them without his comment \u2014 the same warning Project Veritas gave Joe Biden about Ashley Biden\u2019s diary (which it <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/the-media\/2021\/11\/07\/fbi-raids-james-okeefes-house-over-ashley-biden-diary\/\">says<\/a> it obtained legally, and later gave to law enforcement without publishing anything).<\/p>\n<p>The point, Turley said, was not that the government should raid the homes of journalists or publishers, but that everyone knew the FBI would not raid Sulzberger&nbsp;the way it did O\u2019Keefe, for doing the same thing. \u201cThat is precisely the problem.\u201d<\/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>A New York judge ordered the\u00a0New York Times Friday to return and destroy all copies it possessed of legal memoranda prepared for James O\u2019Keefe\u2019s investigative journalism company, Project Veritas, saying &#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-1160335","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\/1160335","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=1160335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160335\/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=1160335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}