Last Updated on November 17, 2021
Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple published a column questioning whether Joe Biden’s FBI and Department of Justice are overreaching in their investigation and subsequent raids of three addresses tied to Project Veritas, including the home of James O’Keefe, stemming from the alleged theft of Ashley Biden’s diary that National File published last year.
Wemple’s article, titled “Did the Justice Department overreach in raiding James O’Keefe’s home?” questions the premise of the Biden regime’s investigation, and whether any criminally occurred at all.
Wemple began by quoting Tucker Carlson, who he famously sparred with on the Fox News host’s program in 2017. “Fox News host Tucker Carlson attributed the raid to O’Keefe’s possible role in ’embarrassing the president’s kid’ and called on free-speech advocates to speak up,” wrote Wemple. “‘Maybe someone should say something — maybe,’ Carlson said.” Wemple noted that non partisan media critics have taken Carlson’s call.
The article then refers to a recent court motion made on behalf of O’Keefe and Project Veritas with the aim of securing the information on the cell phones seized by the FBI. According to O’Keefe, this includes communications with reporters regarding active investigations and donor information critical to funding the media outlet.
What evidence does the Justice Department have to justify the raid on James O'Keefe's home. It had better be good. https://t.co/mHzY9pL72F
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) November 16, 2021
National File spoke to Wemple to give details regarding the article, and stressed that nothing National File learned from the whistleblower who presented a digital copy of Ashley Biden’s diary to National File could be construed as criminality on behalf of Project Veritas:
Tom Pappert, National File’s editor in chief, said that his organization heard from an individual he identified as a whistleblower at Project Veritas who was “upset by the … decision to spike a story that had been thoroughly vetted, in the words of our whistleblower.” That vetting, claims Pappert, included a phone call that Project Veritas had taped with Ashley Biden in which she confirmed that the diary was hers. (Attempts to secure comment from a Biden family representative were unsuccessful.)
Shortly before National File published the purported diary pages, it called O’Keefe to ask for the recording of that call, according to Pappert. Asked how O’Keefe responded, Pappert said, “not happily.” Nothing that National File learned from the whistleblower, said Pappert, “could be construed as criminality” on part of Project Veritas.
Ultimately, Wemple stops short of declaring his own opinion, but features the opinions of multiple parties who suggest that Project Veritas did nothing wrong when it obtained the Ashley Biden diary. These include statements from National File, James O’Keefe, his lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, and Trevor Timm, the executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
This is in stark contrast to Wemple’s colleagues at the New York Times, who somehow obtained confidential information regarding the raids on Project Veritas addresses and questioned the outlet despite O’Keefe being asked by the Department of Justice to keep the investigation private.
National File published the entire 112-page Ashley Biden diary in October of last year, during the final days leading up to the controversial 2020 election. In the diary, Ashley Biden writes about her belief that she was sexually molested as a child and the “probably not appropriate” showers she shared with her father, Joe Biden.
The Ashley Biden diary also features months of entries detailing the author’s struggle with drug abuse, entries that detail her crumbling marriage with multiple affairs, entries showing the family’s fears of a potential scandal due to her brother’s new home, and more that show she bears a deep resentment for her father due to his money, control, and emotional manipulation.
In a video statement, National File’s Editor in Chief Tom Pappert confirmed that this publication obtained the digital copy from the Project Veritas whistleblower, “who was upset that a Project Veritas board member spiked the story.”
Watch National File editor-in-chief Tom Pappert’s statement regarding the FBI and SDNY interest in Ashley Biden’s diary:
