Sep. 12—Lawyers representing Project Veritas, which made an undercover video of a Greenwich assistant principal appearing to admit hiring discrimination against Catholics, conservatives, and people over 30, have responded angrily to a demand by the state attorney general's office that the organization preserve all material potentially relevant to its investigation.

PRESERVATION ISSUE

DEMAND: Connecticut attorney general's office wants Project Veritas to preserve all material potentially relevant to a civil rights investigation the office has opened in response to a covert video the group made of comments by an assistant principal in Greenwich.

RESPONSE: Project Veritas wants that demand "retracted immediately," citing Connecticut's shield law for the news media and saying the attorney general's letter contains a "thinly-veiled threat" against it.

In a Sept. 2 letter to Project Veritas President James O'Keefe, Deputy Associate Attorney General Gregory K. O'Connell said the attorney general's office had "opened a civil rights investigation into the possibility of discriminatory employment practices in the Greenwich Public Schools."

He instructed O'Keefe to "preserve all material potentially relevant to this investigation," adding that O'Keefe "must take immediate action to prevent the deletion or spoilation of any such material."

O'Connell went on to say that his office anticipates "issuing subpoenas for relevant material," adding that if the investigation "substantiates a pattern or practice of illegal conduct, we may initiate appropriate litigation to enforce federal and state law."

In a reply dated Saturday, three lawyers representing Project Veritas told O'Connell that his letter "should be retracted immediately."

They relied in part on Connecticut's "shield law" for the news media, which limits the circumstances in which government investigators can subpoena unpublished material from journalists. The law requires, among other things, that the investigating agency negotiate with the news media organization before issuing a subpoena.

O'Connell's letter included a statement that "the scope and nature" of the attorney general's investigation "may evolve as it progresses."

The lawyers for Project Veritas called that a "thinly-veiled threat to our journalist clients."

The lawyers cited an incident this year in which they said the sheriff of Los Angeles County threatened to investigate a journalist who reported on a police cover-up and later retracted the threat.

"In short Greg, in America, the government shouldn't attack journalists or attempt to chill or silence them," the Project Veritas lawyers wrote.

The organization's lawyers who signed the letter are Paul A. Calli and Charles P. Short of Miami and Lindy R. Urso of Stamford.

The school administrator in the covert video was identified as Jeremy Boland, the assistant principal of the Cos Cob elementary school. The school system has said in a statement that, after it learned of the video, "that staff member was placed on administrative leave."

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