The Justice Department said on Wednesday that it would not bring charges against anyone affiliated with the group Project Veritas over their role in trying to publish the contents of a diary that had been stolen from Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter in the final weeks of the 2020 election campaign.
The prosecutors, who made their announcement in a one-paragraph letter to a judge overseeing the matter, did not say why they were declining to bring additional charges in the long running investigation. In court filings in related cases, the Justice Department had laid out evidence of the group’s involvement in the effort to acquire and publish the diary, and had fought in court for access to evidence that investigators had obtained from the group’s operatives.
The investigation had raised difficult legal questions about the extent to which the First Amendment protected the publication of stolen materials. But it was unclear whether the decision was part of a larger pattern by the Justice Department since President Trump took office to walk away from cases involving his allies. Project Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe, have long been favorites of Mr. Trump’s and gained attention by using sting operations and undercover videos to seek to embarrass liberal groups and mainstream news organizations, among others….