The Justice Department executed search warrants on two locations associated with the conservative propaganda group Project Veritas as part of an investigation into a stolen journal owned by President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, who reported its theft in October 2020, the New York Times reports.
FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Manhattan conducted the search, based on information that James O’Keefe and Project Veritas received the journal but opted not to publish it. Handwritten pages from the book were later published on another website, which claims it received it from a “whistleblower” who worked at another media outlet that had opted not to report on the journal.
An investigation into the theft of the journal was opened in October 2020 when the Biden campaign reported the burglary to the FBI. The pages from the journal were published on the website on October 24, 2020, about two weeks before the presidential election.
The content of the journal is generally mundane, but the right wing website that published it claims that the pages implicate Joe Biden in a scandal related to his son, Hunter, getting illegal and corrupt payments from foreign companies.
The website lists its operating address in Sheridan, Wyoming, the same addressed listed by Branch Six Consulting International, a company owned by Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence agent who had been previously hired by Project Veritas to teach its operative techniques to infiltrate targeted organizations. O’Keefe had previously been connected to a third business that uses the same address as its headquarters.