More than three years after an FBI raid disrupted his home and newsroom, James O’Keefe has finally received his confiscated property: two iPhones.
The devices arrived with a receipt for property from the United States Department of Justice. The form was signed by Special Agent Anthony Casola, the very agent who was present in O’Keefe’s apartment during the November 2021 raid.
Inside the package was a breakdown of the items seized: an iPhone 12 Pro Max and an iPhone A1921. The phones, returned without warning, still held a charge. “The last text messages on one of the phones were from November 6th, 2021,” said O’Keefe, “the day after the raid.” He also noted one message to Fox News host Jesse Watters and a screenshot sent to his lawyer regarding a meeting the morning after the incident.
Curiously, the other iPhone only contained messages up until July 24th, 2021, months before the raid itself, raising questions about what may have happened to the data during the government’s custody.
O’Keefe called the raid “unconstitutional” and announced a forthcoming lawsuit against the Department of Justice. He pointed to the delay in the return of his property as a symbol of bureaucratic abuse and the erosion of protections for journalists.
“If it takes them this long to return your property to a newsroom,” he said in the video, “good luck getting the Epstein list.”
