  From the New York Post Editorial Board: You don’t have to be a fan of James O’Keefe’s style of journalism to be worried about how the government is reacting to it. The FBI and Manhattan federal prosecutors are investigating the case of Ashley Biden’s diary: The president’s daughter says it was stolen in a burglary last year; an obscure right-wing website wound up publishing what it said are pages from it about 10 days before the election. O’Keefe says someone shopped the diary to his Project Veritas, claiming Biden had left it somewhere. His outfit didn’t use it (in part because it couldn’t verify it), and he says he informed law enforcement of the whole thing. But he has some ties to the outfit that did publish, which seems to be why the feds raided the homes of several current or former Veritas employees — before dawn, in O’Keefe’s own case. He’s also outraged that the feds urged him not to go public with the subpoenas, but someone dropped a dime to the New York Times, which started calling for comment an hour after the first raids Thursday morning. Journalists can’t be prosecuted for publishing stolen material unless they were part of the theft. And the theft in question hardly seems to rise to a federal crime. And shield laws normally mean law enforcement can’t make reporters reveal a thing about their sources, even if they didn’t publish anything. Journalists regularly publish material that has been leaked or even taken — consider the Times running President Donald Trump’s tax returns. Unless the feds know something about Veritas sanctioning the burglary, the diary does not warrant pre-dawn raids. It has all the marks of a political vendetta. That’s not at all a good look for a Biden Justice Department already in ill repute for intimidating parents who just ask questions at school board meetings. |
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