James O’Keefe of Project Veritas has won against liberal media giant The New York Times. On Tuesday, Justice Charles Wood of the Westchester County Supreme Court extended a ban keeping the NYT from publishing materials concerning Project Veritas. The Times says the restriction violates First Amendment protections, but the New York judge extended the ban until at least December 1.
December 1 is the deadline to Project Veritas to respond in writing to the Times’ bid to end the ban. The judge’s extension occurred after a 1-3/4-hour hearing in White Plains; part of a defamation lawsuit Project Veritas filed against the Times last year.
Project Veritas, led by James O’Keefe, has used what critics view as deceptive tactics to expose what it describes as liberal media bias. It has objected to a Nov. 11 Times article that drew from memos from a Project Veritas lawyer, and purported to reveal how the group worked with its lawyers to “gauge how far its deceptive reporting practices can go before running afoul of federal laws.”
Wood said as the hearing began that the case involved a clash between two “bedrock principles” of law: “freedom of the speech and freedom of the press, and attorney-client privilege.”
Project Veritas is suing over a September 2020 article about a video the group released which alleged voter fraud occurred during the campaign of Democratic U.S. congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
“The Times has not faced any prior restraint since 1971, when the Nixon administration unsuccessfully sought to block the publication of the Pentagon Papers detailing U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.”
Times’ executive editor Dean Baquet, said the ban sets a “dangerous precedent.”
