Project Veritas legal team rips DOJ raid of O'Keefe as 'sucker punch' to free press, praises unlikely allies

Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe's legal team blasted the government for a "sucker punch to the First Amendment," praising unlikely allies and mainstream journalists who have questioned if the Justice Department overreached by raiding the homes of O’Keefe and his associates.

The FBI reportedly raided O'Keefe and some associates on Nov. 6 because of the alleged diary belonging to President Biden's daughter Ashley Biden, which ended up in the hands of Project Veritas last fall, though the organization decided against publishing it and turned it over to law enforcement. 

An assortment of prominent organizations, reporters and news outlets, including the ACLU and Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple, have since come to the defense of Project Veritas, a conservative group that typically wouldn’t receive support from corporate media. Fox News Digital reached out to O’Keefe to ask about being defended by unlikely allies, and the Project Veritas founder directed the question to his legal team. 

"The government’s raids of Project Veritas’s former journalists, and of founding journalist James O’Keefe, were a sucker punch to the First Amendment, intended to have a chilling effect on a free press," attorney Paul Calli told Fox News Digital.