Earlier this month, The New York Times wrote parts of sensitive conversations between Project Veritas operatives and their lawyers — which the group said should be protected under attorney-client privilege.
The reports that appeared in the paper’s publishing just days after federal authorities raided the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, as well as the homes of two of his associates. Authorities took devices on which O’Keefe said were sensitive journalistic material, calling the seizures a violation of his First Amendment rights.
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Project Veritas this week succeeded in convincing the court to briefly stop the publication of data from the legal memos by combining them to another case in which the group and The New York Times are arguing in court.
After The New York Times ran a pair of stories critical of a Project Veritas probe last year, lawyers for the group sued the paper for defamation in the New York Supreme Court.
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In March, the group achieved a victory when a judge allowed the case to move forward, overruling the New York Times' attempts to dismiss the lawsuit.
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But The New York Times filed in May to stop the discovery process in the defamation lawsuit, a stay which the judge finally granted. That stopped Project Veritas from receiving documents from the paper that could have supported its case and also blocked The New York Times from doing the same to the group.
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The judge’s decision this week to ask The New York Times to justify its reporting on the legal memos, as well as to stop writing stories about them until it does so, was based on a complex argument from Project Veritas lawyers in the defamation case — not the investigation that led to the seizure of O’Keefe’s records.
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Project Veritas attorneys claimed The New York Times had violated the stay of discovery order by obtaining documents related to the defamation lawsuit outside of the legal process.
Libby Locke, a lawyer in the defamation case, said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner that the memos at the heart of this week’s ruling were “directly related” to the lawsuit New York Times attorneys are fighting.
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“The New York Times sought and obtained, over Veritas’ objection, a stay of discovery,” Locke said. “Notwithstanding that stay order, the Times improperly solicited, obtained, and disseminated the attorney-client privileged communications of its litigation adversary written by counsel of record in the litigation.”
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“And the content of those privileged materials is directly related to the substance of the defamation litigation — an admission the Times has tacitly made by referencing the litigation in its article about Veritas’s attorney-client communications,” Locke added.
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