Sunday, December 26, 2021

Project Veritas Flip Flop On Press Freedoms

    Project Veritas has been in the news recently. A judge had recently ruled against the New York Times in a suit in which the New York Times had acquired information legally from a source that Project Veritas contested was privy to attorney-client privilege and release of such information should be restricted. The judge had ruled that the New York Times should hand over all data and destroy any copies. Project Veritas' lawyers had argued that not only did the memos in question fit a narrow exception in the law that would apply to the prior restraint doctrine but that the New York Times' journalists had an ethical obligation to turn over the information in the first place.

    This position by Project Veritas is very interesting since just a little over a month ago Project Veritas was in court over an federal raid on Project Veritas' founder James O'Keefe's home as part of a criminal investigation into how the organization had gotten a hold of the stolen diary of President Biden's youngest daughter.  In that case the group argued that First Amendment protected journalists' free speech rights in regards to the stolen diary and had wanted an independent monitor to review the seized material to see that it did not violate confidential communications with their lawyers. 

    Kind of interesting that when the shoe is on the other foot and that in the New York Times case Project Veritas does not like the idea of others having their information.  What makes this especially interesting is that the New York Times had claimed to have obtained their information legally, whereas Project Veritas seemed to inexplicably possess a stolen diary of the current American president.