Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe had his New York home raided by FBI agents Saturday over a stolen diary said to belong to President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley.
Authorities raided O'Keefe's Westchester County residence on Fenimore Road in Mamaroneck just a day after O'Keefe himself acknowledged Project Veritas was being probed. O'Keefe is yet to make a comment on Saturday's raid.
It came hours after a Friday raid on two other properties connected to the group, including an apartment in a Midtown Manhattan block, and a home in Mamaroneck, close to the location of Saturday's raid at O'Keefe's apartment.
Project Veritas did not publish the handwritten diary, as O'Keefe said in a video released Friday that the group could not confirm the authenticity of the diary, its belonging to Ashley Biden or that the contents of the diary were truthful.
The diary was obtained by Project Veritas just a week before the 2020 Presidential Election, and later published by a right-wing website days before America went to the polls. It says it obtained the diary from a 'tipster' who'd obtained it after staying in a location that Ashley Biden had previously visited.
Project Veritas bills itself as a journalism nonprofit, and uses undercover tactics to expose mainstream media bias against conservatives.
The investigation, ordered by the Department of Justice (DOJ), was carried out by both federal investigators and federal prosecutors in Manhattan, according to the New York Times.
A spokesperson for the FBI said that agents had 'performed law enforcement activity' at the building, but did not give any details of the investigation. O'Keefe has yet to comment.
O'Keefe said Friday that Project Veritas had been offered the diary by tipsters who said that the then-Democratic candidate's daughter left it in a room where she stayed and the tipsters stayed after she departed. O'Keefe said that the tipsters said they were shopping it around to other outlets to see who would offer money for it.
O'Keefe then claimed that once they got hold of the journal, they attempted to return it to an attorney representing Ashley. The attorney refused to authenticate the diary, so he said they then turned it into law enforcement.
O'Keefe, who is suing the New York Times for defemation, claimed the raids were politically-motivated.
But another conservative news site did publish the full 112-page diary, on Oct. 28, 2020, one week before the election. It was largely ignored by media and other conservative news sites that were likely skeptical of its authenticity. The Department of Justice's involvement, however, boosts the likelihood that the writings are genuinely those of the first daughter.
The website claimed to have obtained the diary from a whistleblower who worked for a media organization that had declined to publish the story.
Ashley has kept a much lower profile than her half-brother Hunter, whose business dealings former President Trump had his sights set on at the time of the diary's publication.
Last year, the DOJ launched an investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes.
O'Keefe said in the video that Project Veritas had received a grand jury subpoena and the DOJ had asked, but not ordered, the group not to disclose the existence of the subpoena. O'Keefe said that he did not know who had leaked the raid to the New York Times.
'In what world is the alleged theft of a diary investigated by the president's FBI and his DOJ? A diary. This fed investigation smacks of politics,' O'Keefe said.
The DOJ under President Trump had opened an investigation into theft of the diary after a member of the Biden team reported it to authorities in October 2020. The representative of the Biden family had said that several of Ashley Biden's belongings had been stolen, according to the Times.
Meads, a longtime Project Veritas operative and confidant of O'Keefe, has lived in the 35th street apartment in Midtown Manhattan that the FBI raided since 2019.
Ashley, 40, is the sole daughter of Joe, 78, and First Lady Jill, 70. She is married to Philadelphia-based surgeon Dr. Howard Krein.
Project Veritas' undercover investigations and secret recordings have targeted Democrats, Planned Parenthood, media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post, Facebook and even Pfizer-BioNTech.
At one point, former British spy Richard Seddon was recruited to train operatives at Project Veritas.
Seddon owns a company, Branch Six Consulting International, registered to an address in Sheridan, Wyo. Flyover Media, the company that owns the website that published the diary, is registered to that same address.
The founder of Project Veritas was once president of a company that was also registered the the same address.
Project Veritas is currently suing the New York Times for libel over a video they published containing allegations of voter fraud. The Times called the video 'deceptive' and full of 'misinformation.'