Mamaroneck In The News Again As FBI Raids Project Veritas

MAMARONECK, NY — The rise of Project Veritas and the Proud Boys to national prominence over the past decade has shown a spotlight on leafy, suburban Larchmont and Mamaroneck in tony Westchester County.

The most recent took place Saturday when the FBI searched the Mamaroneck home of Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe.

While Project Veritas has garnered the most local mentions for the Sound Shore, Larchmont hit the news in 2018 after a riot in New York City following a speech by resident and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes brought him to the attention of his neighbors.

McInnes stepped down as leader of the Proud Boys after the NYC riot, saying he did so to legally protect the 10 members arrested afterward. Larchmont was in the news again in 2019 when McInnes asked neighbors to remove "Hate Has No Home Here" lawn signs.

McInnes founded the Proud Boys in 2016. Mamaroneck-based Project Veritas is older, having been founded in 2011. While the former is known for its "western chauvinism" and McInnes' praise of violence, the latter is known for using hidden cameras and hiding identities to try to ensnare targets in embarrassing conversations and reveal supposed corruption or bias.

In 2017, Project Veritas' headquarters in Mamaroneck achieved national prominence after Washington Post reporters staked it out. Post reporters had been approached by a woman accusing then-Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of getting her pregnant when she was 15. After they did some fact-checking and confronted her, she drove to the Project Veritas office on the Boston Post Road and went in, they reported.

In an email to supporters afterward, O'Keefe wrote "Following months of undercover work within The Washington Post, our investigative journalist embedded within the publication had their cover blown."

In September, the headquarters received attention again as one of the many businesses and homes on the Sound Shore ruined by devastating flooding during tropical storm Ida. O'Keefe posted a video on YouTube Sept. 2 asking for donations to help rebuild.

Last weekend's raid of O'Keefe's apartment was over a diary reported stolen from President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley last October. The search, of several New York homes of people tied to Project Veritas, took place months after the group received a diary, O'Keefe said, from a "tipster."

The Associated Press reported that, in a video posted on YouTube, O’Keefe said his organization had also received a grand jury subpoena and that his group had not “engaged in any illegal conduct."

O’Keefe said his group tried to return the diary to a lawyer for Ashley Biden who refused to authenticate it, and later provided it to law enforcement, The New York Times reported.

A Times article after the raid reported that pages from the diary were posted Oct. 24, 2020, on a right-wing website connected to a former British spy who had trained female undercover operatives for Project Veritas to work investigating government critics of then-President Donald Trump.

Project Veritas's targets have also been local. The Journal News said in a 2017 article about the organization's finances that O'Keefe and another operative masquerading as a teacher and a friend secretly recorded two Yonkers teachers union officials while pretending to ask for advice on avoiding disciplinary charges for hitting a child.

In addition to geographic proximity, O'Keefe and McInnes have a "long-standing" relationship, the New Republic magazine reported. Project Veritas has used members of the Proud Boys as undercover operatives, the magazine reported, also writing that O’Keefe was named a “ from the Tribeca Film Festival.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.