Two people entered guilty pleas on Thursday to charges relating to the theft and sale of a diary belonging to presidential daughter Ashley Biden, along with other personal items of hers.
According to the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pled guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, "involving the theft of personal belongings of an immediate family member of a then former government official who was a candidate for national political office." That long-winded construction evidently refers to Ashley Biden, the 41-year-old daughter of Joe and Jill Biden.
According to prosecutors and media reports, Harris and Kurlander sold Biden's stolen items to the controversial conservative activist group Project Veritas for $40,000, although Project Veritas later returned them and has denied wrongdoing.
According to federal prosecutors, the diary, along with personal tax records, a digital device containing family photos and a cellphone were being kept at a residence in Delray Beach, Florida, where Ashley Biden had briefly lived and was later occupied by Aimee Harris. The Guardian reports that "prosecutors said Harris stole the items and got in touch with the other defendant, a man who contacted Project Veritas, which asked for photos of the material and then paid for the two to bring it to New York."
A New York Times report published in March recounted a similar story: Ashley Biden stored some personal belongings at the house in Delray Beach when she moved out, with the owner's permission. At some later point, Harris found the diary there and showed it to various people at a 2020 fundraiser for the Trump campaign, which was attended by Donald Trump Jr. (It remains unclear whether Trump Jr. or anyone else associated with the campaign saw the diary.) As Salon's Igor Derysh summarized at the time:
Shortly after that, Project Veritas obtained the diary and asked the couple who had originally acquired it to retrieve more items from the home where Ashley Biden had stayed to verify that it was hers, according to the report. A caller from Project Veritas' headquarters in New York later tried to "trick" Ashley Biden into confirming its authenticity, using a fake identity in a phone call offering to return it, according to the Times. That apparent effort could complicate the group's claims that its activities were protected under the First Amendment.
Harris and Kurlander sold the items to Project Veritas for $40,000 "and even returned to take more of the victim's property when asked to do so," said a representative from the office of Manhattan U.S. attorney Damian Williams. "Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person's personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result."
Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe told Intelligencer that the group was "not involved in any theft of property and that all of Project Veritas's information on how the confidential sources found the property came from the sources themselves." It is unclear whether Project Veritas faces potential legal consequences for this episode. O'Keefe has consistently denied that the group does anything illegal. Ultimately Project Veritas did not publish any portion of the diary, and a lawyer for the group flew to Florida and returned Ashley Biden's possessions to police, reporting them as "possibly stolen."
Harris and Kurlander face a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
