Thread by @BGrueskin

Just in: Judge in Westchester County, NY, rules in favor of Project Veritas in its effort to keep NY Times from publishing or using Veritas' atty-client memos. Justice Wood says this will 'protect integrity of judicial process' and 'is no defeat for the First Amendment.'

Judge says Veritas 'met its burden of showing that the subject memoranda were obtained by irregular means.' He also finds no basis for Veritas' contention that NYT attorneys violated rules of professional conduct.

iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentD…

This is the same judge who ruled against the NY Times' effort to dismiss a defamation suit, filed by Veritas last year. I wrote about the case in May, via @CJR cjr.org/opinion/nytime…

For those of you wondering about the judge: He was elected, as a Republican, in 2009.

Two other judges on this court were assigned the case, but they recused themselves. That's when it went to Justice Wood. ballotpedia.org/Charles_Wood#c…

“This ruling should raise alarms not just for advocates of press freedoms but for anyone concerned about the dangers of government overreach into what the public can and cannot know,” says NYT Publisher A.G. Sulzberger nytimes.com/2021/12/24/bus…

Interesting perspective here on how a public institution could use atty/client privilege to shield docs that the press has a right to see.

https://twitter.com/simko_bednarski/status/1474498951759990790?s=20

Veritas attorney @libbylocke says the “ruling affirms that The New York Times’s behavior was irregular,” calls it “a victory for the First Amendment for all journalists” & adds that the NYT is “a vehicle for the prosecution of a partisan political agenda” nytimes.com/2021/12/24/bus…

“Justice Wood has taken it upon himself to decide what The Times can and cannot report on. That’s not how the First Amendment is supposed to work.”
— @nytopinion’s in-house editorial

nytimes.com/2021/12/24/opi…

From an NYT filing last month:

"Project Veritas presents itself as an investigative news organization; it is difficult to understand why it now advances arguments that would enable litigants to restrain its own work." docs.google.com/document/d/1ec…