Court Orders DOJ to Stop Extracting Data from James O’Keefe’s Phone

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A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Justice Department to stop extracting data from Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s cellular device.

The one-page order from Judge Analisa Torres in the Southern District of New York ordered the feds to “confirm via email that is paused its extraction and review of the contents” of O’Keefe’s devices. The decision came a day after O’Keefe’s group filed a motion requesting the action. An attorney for O’Keefe, Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican National Committeewoman prominent in conservative politics, highlighted the development in a post on Twitter.

The FBI raided O’Keefe’s home last week along with two more locations connected to associates of Project Veritas related to the theft of a diary from Ashley Biden, President Joe Biden’s youngest child. Handwritten pages from the diary were published on Oct. 24, 2020 by National File, a blog maintained by former Breitbart writer Patrick Howley. Project Veritas did not publish the diary, but the FBI reportedly suspects the theft was connected to at least one of the group’s associates.

The DOJ opened an investigation into the matter in October 2020, under Attorney General William Barr, after the Biden family reported the theft of the diary.

O’Keefe argued in a Tuesday interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that his role in the matter was covered by the First Amendment. “I’m calling upon all journalists to take a stand against this,” O’Keefe said. “A source comes to us with information, I don’t even decide to publish it. If they can do this to me … if they can raid my home and take my journalist notes, they can do it to any journalist.”