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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

That's nothing, there was the time the FBI raided James O'Keefe's house to find Ashley Biden's diary. I feel weird writing any of that out, because its sounds batshit, but they did that. Some people may not like James for any given number of reasons (NPR did a hit peace saying he doesn't qualify for journalism protections - which to me is a matter of opinion not necessarily fact), but since when do federal agents raid peoples homes for diaries? Were there nuclear launch codes in there or something? I would imagine there's way more important things they could have been doing at the time.

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I wouldn't say "that's nothing." And the O'Keefe thing is certainly problematic, but it's worth noting that the investigation was for purchasing stolen goods/information.

Obviously not many <$20 stolen objects would warrant an FBI raid, but also if it were actually worth <$20 then Veritas wouldn't have paid $40,000 for it.

AFAICT their journalistic immunity basically got them out of charges for buying goods they knew to be stolen at time of purchase, which is federally illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2315 and separately illegal in all 50 states.

Kind of a key point in that – the whole purchasing stolen information thing.

Yes that was also bad. I don't know why you say "that's nothing" though, this is just an additional example of a bad thing. We don't have to pick which one is worse and then minimize every other example.

The FBI working to recover stolen property on behalf of a private citizen who was the victim of a crime is something different. Harder to defend a reporter holding stolen property just because the victim is related to a public official. Would actually feel better about defending O'Keefe if the diary did have launch codes.

Wasn't the diary stolen, and thus the property was stolen? If you have proof or reasonable suspicion that someone has possession of a stolen property, shouldn't law enforcement be able to retrieve that?

Yes, and also Project Veritas hadn’t published it. The two events are completely different things.

O'Keefe had already returned it, as I recall.

Right. It wasn't to recover the diary, it was an investigation into how they acquired it (which appears to have been clearly illegal given that you can't buy stolen goods, even if you're a journalist).

I would not say that Project Veritas acted illegally in this case, although I have absolutely no love for them and I think they have acted illegally and immorally in other cases. In the end the Justice Department did not bring charges.

You absolutely can't offer someone money to steal documents. That's clear. Even providing advice on acquiring documents is probably going to be unlawful. And if possession of the document itself is otherwise illegal (i.e., CSAM) there's no protection there.

It isn't necessarily illegal to offer money for a document, particularly if you don't have knowledge of how the document was acquired. I'm not familiar enough with this case to have a strong opinion other than knowing the DoJ elected not to bring charges.

And, yes, it was Trump's DoJ. In this case I'm unaware of any evidence that the decision was politically motived and I still have some confidence that whistleblowers would speak out, particularly given the recent wave of resignations due to directives in Minneapolis. I think people of good will could disagree with me there for sure.

It is unambiguously illegal to pay for goods you know to be stolen. In all 50 states and federally.

Most courts would assume someone who purchased a private diary of a living person would know that it was stolen.

"particularly if you don't have knowledge of how the document was acquired."

Correct, and there's no way that the private diary of a still-living daughter of a politician was acquired by any method other than theft.

Prosecutors don't need to prove the buyer actually dispositively knew the document was stolen, only that reasonable person would have known it to be such.

Which would be obvious in this case.

"No way" is an awfully strong statement. For example, people abandon personal material in storage units which are subsequently auctioned off fairly often.

But I appreciate you iterating on this -- I understand your position and while I disagree with you on the question of what "reasonable" would be in this case, I absolutely think that if I could read minds I would find that Project Veritas staffers at the very least knew the diary was stolen.

I feel like you're starting this with a sympathetic eye towards O'Keefe, who is not now nor has he ever been a good-faith actor. You're also obscuring that the diary was stolen property, which law enforcement absolutely does "raid" homes to recover.

The O'Keefe thing might have been bad, but raiding and searching a reporter's house is incredibly bad. Do we not get to object to the incredibly bad thing, because what might have been a small bad thing took place? You seem to be falling prey to a logical fallacy of some sort.

> Were there nuclear launch codes in there or something?

It's funny you say that because that'd be just the same, classified information that leaked. They'd just change the codes and try to find who leaked them. The codes themselves would be inconsequential (once changed).

It's way too far into the Trump administration for people to still be responding to authoritarian moves by Trump by finding Biden administration actions that sound vaguely similar if you don't think too hard and then pretending nothing new is going on here. (Even if it wasn't, "that's nothing" would be a pretty weird inference to draw with a comparison to something that clearly upsets you, and an article is a "piece", not a "peace".)

Um no.

Along with the diary, tax records, cellphone and family photos were stolen from someone's home, then sold for $40,000 to a far-right activist / centrist paragon of journalism James O'Keefe (whichever you prefer). Said paragon was alleged to have paid these (eventually convicted so I'm allowed to say) criminals more money to steal more stuff from this home.

While the warrant's probable cause section was redacted (maybe inappropriately), the facts of the case are still that the person being raided was alleged to have actually participated in an ongoing conspiracy to commit theft and transporting stolen property across state lines.

This is just Hunter Bidens laptop 2.0 equating two non-similar things. The whole point of this post is that the journalist didn't steal anything - Ashley Bidens property was stolen. Burying the lede here.

Sorry to be a pedant, but not exactly. They raided James O'Keefe's house to seize his cell phones as part of an investigation into potential conspiracy to traffic stolen goods (the diary) across state lines. Journalists (which is a very broad term, and in this context I think O'Keefe qualifies) are certainly allowed to receive stolen or classified material, which also applies to the raid on the WaPo reporter. They are not allowed to induce others to break the law on their behalf, and that's what was at question in the Biden diary case.

I don't think the O'Keefe raid was justified and it's certainly the first step on a slippery slope. I also think the current situation is a worse violation of norms.

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