James O’Keefe, Eric Cochran, Spencer Meads, the three former Project Veritas journalists raided by the FBI regarding the Ashley Biden diary announce they are teaming up with the nonprofit legal defense fund, Private Citizen.

This comes on the heels of Project Veritas announcing it is no longer indemnifying the three journalists. Private Citizen needs to raise money to pay our legal defense bills with the FBI raid, since Project Veritas spent the millions and millions of dollars O’Keefe raised.

On November 2021, FBI conducted pre-dawn raids on myself and my colleagues, Eric Cochran and Spencer Meads, seizing cell phones, journalistic notes, and other devices. This was all reportedly over an investigation we were doing into the Ashley Biden diary, a story we never published.

We obtained video from one of the raids on Eric Cochran who said, “I woke up at 6 AM to banging on my door and the first thing I did was grab my undercover camera and opened the door. There was the FBI.”

Spencer was raided in NYC, “I got a knock on my door. They broke my door to gain entry.”

James O’Keefe was also raided and said, “On Saturday, November 5th at 6 AM they [FBI] banged on my door in Mamaroneck [NY]. I opened my door and there appeared to be a dozen agents who went through my things.”

A few months later in March 2022, we discovered the US government had issued secret warrants getting access to our emails, secretly reading our emails, concealing that from the court in our case against the SDNY.

They asked Microsoft, Uber, and Google for information about us as journalists including emails between us and our attorneys. These secret warrants were stamped by various magistrate judges and a Microsoft whistleblower brought that to our attention.

The Department of Justice even sought and obtained numerous secrecy orders that prevented Microsoft from disclosing the surveillance to anyone. The SDNY also went around Judge Torres and the Special Master and obtained two secrecy orders after the Special Master had been appointed. The Deptartment of Justice attempted to gag Microsoft from even talking about the secret warrants even after we were raided by the FBI.

The overstepping by the government and Department of Justice was so egregious in its violation of our journalistic rights, that even the ACLU deplored the government’s violations of our press freedom. The ACLU and reporters committee for Freedom of the Press had requested the affidavit to be unsealed in our case so we can see the probable cause the government used to seize our journalistic notes.

In society, the American people should have a right to see the probable cause when the government takes such an extreme action to violate those first amendment privileges.

A whistleblower would later come out at the FBI referred to us as News Media in their computer systems. Our case was labeled SIM News Media. SIM means “Sensitive Investigative Matter.” This basically affords the subject of the investigation with certain protections internally. “Because it’s sensitive, it could be a political figure, it could be someone in a church, or a religious figure, it could be a news media organization.”

When James O’Keefe was removed as the leader of Project Veritas in February, there were millions of dollars that were raised to help defend these journalists legal defense funds, indemnifying them from these attacks by the government against their first amendment rights. Since February, all that money has been spent by Project Veritas, and they have announced they will no longer be indemnifying or helping us with our legal defense needs.

But there’s another 501c3 called Private Citizen, which will help fund these journalists legal battle against government overreach. It’s a registered tax deductible 501c3 with board members that James O’Keefe trusts and they are now funding our legal defense.

Support the rights of journalists because without the First Amendment, freedom is just an illusion.

Thank you for your unwavering support. Together, we will continue to expose the uncomfortable truths that others would prefer to keep hidden.

To make a tax deductible donation to Private Citizen visit HERE.

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