NYT publishes internal Project Veritas documents showing how the group avoided breaking federal law

According to the New York Times, internal Project Veritas documents show how the group worked to avoid breaking the federal Espionage Act in 2018. The group’s sting operations included government workers.

In 2018, conservative outlet Project Veritas launched an effort in order to expose bias against former President Donald Trump in the FBA and other government agencies. Memos from the company’s attorney said the group gathered information through secret recordings.

Workers also asked the attorney about whether they could use the Tinder dating app to meet government employees to could have national security clearances. “Because intent is relevant – and broadly defined – ensuring PV journalists’ intent is narrow and lawful would be paramount in any operation,” Attorney Benjamin Barr wrote in a memo.

According to the report, another memo warned against Veritas employees using fake names or other falsified information at events where Secret Service personnel vet people who attend.

Barr also noted that attending closed events that require ID an “invitation” for a charge of breaking a federal law against lying to government employees. In one 2017 memo, Barr reportedly said that the law “continues to be an expansive, dangerous law that inhibits Veritas’s operations.”

Those memos surfaced as a federal probe was launched into Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe, following the alleged theft of a diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley. O’Keefe’s Mamaroneck home, and the homes of two other Veritas employees in New York, were raided by the FBI earlier this month in relation to the Ashley Biden diary probe.

In a statement to the Times, Veritas indicated that it stood behind the memos, saying the work done by the group “reflects Project Veritas’s dedication to the First Amendment, which protects the right to gather information, including about those in power.”