James O’Keefe’s investigative activist group Project Veritas has uncovered documents from Microsoft, showing that the Department of Justice had been spying on journalists.
According to Veritas, documents have been obtained that show that the Southern District of New York was spying on Project Veritas journalists “well before the FBI raided the homes of our journalists last November, secretly reading our emails, concealing that from a court in our case against the SDNY.”
The FBI raided Veritas’s O’Keefe two days after they searched the homes of his close associates in November of 2021.
“This is a fundamental intolerable abridgment of the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” said O’Keefe.
Over 45 electronic devices were seized during those raids by the FBI, related in connection to the unpublished diary of Ashley Biden, which they turned over to authorities.
“Within five days, US District Court Judge Analisa Torres ordered the Southern District of New York to pause its review of my devices,” O’Keefe said.
The documents from Microsoft show that from November 2020 to April 2021, the DOJ obtained secret warrants to “surreptitiously collect privileged communications and contacts of eight American journalists, myself included, from Microsoft.”
“The DOJ even sought and obtained numerous secrecy orders preventing Microsoft from disclosing the surveillance to anyone,” O’Keefe said in the video released on Tuesday.
In response, O’Keefe said that Veritas is “filing a motion demanding that the federal government disclose if it engaged in covert spying of our journalists by secretly demanding production of our protective materials from any other businesses like Microsoft.”
The SDNY is in possession of 150,000 documents it should not have had, Project Veritas says.
“Project Veritas’ Motion seeks to require the SDNY to comply with the Special Master order by stopping their review of the surreptitiously obtained emails and disclose other hidden spying campaigns executed against the non-profit’s journalists,” Project Veritas reported.
