Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe takes questions from Congress members over DOJ and FBI attacks on press freedom

O'Keefe told members that there were preexisting rules that the department is not following, and that the legislative branch needed to "do something about it," adding that the department couldn't be trusted for a number of reasons, including that they do not consider him a journalist because he does "not get permission from the subjects" he investigates.

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"That directly contradicts common sense as well as the law," he said, saying that they could not be trusted to define who is and is not a journalist. "That's against what the First Amendment stands for."

O'Keefe pointed out that during Veritas' several defamation cases which it has won, the organization was identified as a journalistic organization.

Later, O'Keefe discussed how the process of proving his innocence in cases against the DOJ and FBI is a punishment in itself.

"The whole idea of journalism is to get sources to trust you, and what do you think sources think when they put this journalist in handcuffs and take all their report notebooks. The chilling effect is self-evident. Maybe that's what they're trying to do.

"... The legislative branch has to make sure that doesn't happen, and the problem with execution of a search warrant, the ACLU lawyers were in my office, which was in itself an extraordinary fact to the principles involved here, and what they informed me, ' this has never happened before in American history.' And I want to make sure that it doesn't happen again, to anybody.

"You don't show up to a journalist's home with a battering ram. Probably cause against a journalist? As soon as they walk into your apartment with a battering ram and guns pointed at you, there's no remedy.

"The constitutional violation is already too great. You've already passed the rubicon. This can't ever happen again."

O'Keefe said that the burden of proof must be on the government, saying that the federal rules of criminal procedure "make this clear. The privacy protection act makes this clear. Attorney General Merrick Garland made it clear in July. They just broke their own rules," he said, urging Congress members to do something again.

Congresswoman Lauren Boebert asked if she believed this was an isolated incident or another example of Biden's attack on conservative speech.

"For me, it's the disparate treatment, the unequal application of the law," he said. "... It's the disparate treatment under the law that we have to address for."