We’ve been alerted to two errors in my weekend column on the Justice Department’s obvious targeting of James O’Keefe’s right-leaning sting-journalism organization, Project Veritas, in connection with the FBI’s investigation of the theft of a diary (and other property) from Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Both cited errors — one certain, the other less clear — are immaterial to the substance of what I’ve described and surmised, but to the extent I had details wrong they should of course be corrected.
The column centers on guilty pleas in the case last week by Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander. Ominously for Project Veritas, which has been implicated in the probe, Harris and Kurlander agreed to cooperate, and the charge to which they pleaded was conspiracy with “others” not named in the charging document, to transport Ashley Biden’s stolen property across state lines. In the pertinent part, I wrote (I’m adding italics to highlight the errors):
O’Keefe stresses that PV opted not to publish the diary. Though he insisted that PV made sure that law-enforcement officials got the diary (which was certainly big of PV after apparently paying $50,000 for it), excerpts of the diary were published by a website called Conservative File on October 24 [in 2020.]
I clearly got wrong the name of the organization that published Ms. Biden’s diary after Project Veritas obtained it from Harris and Kurlander. It is called National File, not Conservative File. I apologize for the error. I would apologize to Conservative File, in particular, but I don’t believe such an organization exists (from what I gather, the domain name is available for sale). For what it’s worth, I did cite a New York Times report that identified National File as the “conservative website” that initially published excerpts of the diary on October 24, 2020, and then the full diary two days later. Obviously, that does not excuse me for garbling what the Times accurately reported into “Conservative File,” as I did.
To be sure, I could have made the identity of the actual publisher clearer by linking to National File’s own reports (which I looked at while I was writing the column). I opted not to do that, however, because (a) the property was stolen; (b) the Trump campaign rebuffed an offer of the diary and advised Harris and Kurlander to surrender it to the FBI; (c) there is evidence (as the above-linked Times report elaborates) that, twelve days before National File published the diary, O’Keefe told his PV team that he’d decided not to publish the diary because doing so would be perceived as a “cheap shot” (though the criminal information alleges that PV continued paying Harris and Kurlander after that point — more on that presently); (d) the point of my column was to analyze what was going on in the investigation, not to add gratuitously to Ms. Biden’s embarrassment; and (e) there is plenty of reporting about the diary, easily accessible to those who want to find it.
The second claimed error is not so clear. I wrote that the Justice Department alleged that Project Veritas “apparently” paid “$50,000” for the diary and other Ashley Biden property. I’ve now been advised that it’s $40,000. As we shall see, however, it is easily more than $40,000. My conclusion that $50,000 was the apparent amount paid to Harris and Kurlander was based on the way the Justice Department described the payments in the criminal information, which is less than clear — though, on perusal, $40,000 seems more accurate.
The information (see p. 6, para. 12) states that, at a dinner in New York on September 12, 2020, a PV executive (“Executive-1”) “agreed to make an initial payment from the organization to HARRIS of $10,000” for the diary and other Biden property provided to PV earlier in the day. I assumed, apparently incorrectly, that this was shorthand for saying that PV made the payment on September 12.
The information goes on to allege (at p. 9-10, para. 20) that PV made a total of $40,000 in payments to Harris and Kurlander in September and October 2020. The payments were as follows: $10,000 on September 18; $20,000 on October 21; and $10,000 on October 24. My apparent error was in assuming this was $40,000 in addition to an initial $10,000 on September 12. On closer scrutiny, the better interpretation of the information’s allegations is that PV merely agreed to pay the first $10,000 on September 12, then actually paid it on September 18 — so that $40,000 was the total amount paid directly to Harris and Kurlander through all of September and October.
I am grateful to be corrected if this is more accurate. I don’t see, though, how the correction helps PV. According to the Justice Department’s allegations, on September 12, at least early on, PV arguably did not know the Biden property was stolen by Harris — as opposed, say, to having been abandoned by Biden and then found by Harris. Yet, by the evening of September 12, and certainly by September 18 when the first PV payment was apparently made, the charging document indicates that PV officials (a) already knew that the first batch of property (including the diary) was stolen, and (b) were actively encouraging Harris to steal a second batch (which, thus encouraged, Harris had done on September 17).
All that said, what I stated in the column is that PV had “apparently pa[id] $50,000 for” the diary. Even if only $40,000 went directly to Harris and Kurlander, I doubt my $50,000 peg is off the mark by much in light of the other expenses described in the charges.
According to the information, on September 12, 2020, Harris and Kurlander flew from Florida to New Jersey at PV’s expense to deliver the first batch of Biden’s property. The information alleges that “HARRIS and KURLANDER – with the Victim’s property in tow – took a car service to a luxury hotel in New York City, at [PV’s] expense.” Now, that could mean that PV paid only for a car service from (presumably) Newark International Airport to the Manhattan hotel, but common sense suggests that PV paid for the hotel, too. The information (p. 6, para. 12) further states that two PV officials hosted Harris and Kurlander on the night of September 12 — dinner for four at a Manhattan restaurant, it appears.
According to the allegations to which they’ve pled guilty, Harris and Kurlander flew back to Florida the next day, again at PV’s expense (see information, p. 6-7, para. 13). Subsequently, the PV employee who was at the earlier New York City meetings flew to Florida on September 17, lodged there for at least two nights (where is unclear), paid to ship the additional Biden stolen property back to PV’s New York offices, and presumably flew back to New York sometime on or after September 19 (see information, p. 8-9, paras. 18-19).
These flight, car fare, dining, lodging, and shipping costs must have cost something close to $10,000 — probably a bit less, but maybe more.
A last point: I haven’t spent a ton of time on Project Veritas over the years, but what I have written has been pretty supportive. I thought, for example, that the work O’Keefe did (with Hannah Giles) in exposing Project ACORN back in 2009 — which is really what launched PV — was valuable. And in Saturday’s column, I opined that the mainstream media — which itself engages in some dodgy information-gathering practices — would be supporting PV and O’Keefe if they were kindred-lefties.
Moreover, having been in law enforcement for a long time, I am well aware that gathering information can be grimy business, and it often involves deceptive practices. Even the line the law purports to draw at theft is a fuzzy one. The Justice Department that is investigating PV is not above using information against A that has been stolen by B — the government is permitted to do that as long as it did not encourage or abet B in the theft. And let’s be real: If Ivanka Trump had a humiliating diary or Eric Trump had an incriminating laptop, our favorite media outlets and their favorite political party would not give a hoot whether those items were stolen before landing in their hot little hands. All we’d be hearing is that “the public’s right to know” outweighed any ethical concerns about how salacious or inculpatory information was acquired.
The point of my column was not to cast judgment. It was to explain to readers that the guilty pleas of Harris and Kurlander, and the details in the charging document, elucidate that the Justice Department is trying to make a case against one or more people connected to PV, which DOJ seems to regard as an attractive target.
In any event, I have revised my column to reflect the correct name of the outfit that published the diary, and have changed “after apparently paying $50,000” to “after apparently paying over $40,000.” In addition, I’ve included a link to this post, explaining these revisions.