Ashley Biden Calls Theft of Her Diary ‘Heinous Bullying,’ as Florida Woman Who Stole It Is Sentenced to One Month in Prison

A Florida woman will soon report to federal prison for stealing and selling first daughter Ashley Biden’s diary in 2020. The woman, Aimee Harris, conspired with another man to harm President Biden’s campaign, prosecutors argued. Harris was sentenced on Tuesday to serve one month in federal prison and three months of house arrest. She had asked the judge for no jail time. Prosecutors recommended between four and 10 months in jail. In a statement to the court, Ms. Biden said having her diary stolen was “one of the most heinous forms of bullying,” the New York Times reported. Her attorney did not make a victim statement at the sentencing hearing. Harris and her co-conspirator, Robert Kurlander, both pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property in 2022. Harris has for months irritated the court by repeatedly delaying her sentencing with various excuses. She was also arrested for drunk driving. Kurlander has yet to be sentenced.Harris and Kurlander were each paid $20,000 by a conservative media organization, Project Veritas, for the diary after the two first unsuccessfully attempted to sell it to the Trump campaign, prosecutors said. “Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, said. They “sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”The Biden administration and the Department of Justice faced criticism from First Amendment and press freedom advocates in 2021 when the FBI raided the home of Project Veritas’s founder, James O’Keefe, in the middle of the night. A federal judge later appointed a special master to ensure no constitutional rights were violated when Mr. O’Keefe’s home was raided by law enforcement. Two other homes were also searched as part of the inquiry into the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary. Even the American Civil Liberties Union, which has in the past described Project Veritas’s methods and tactics as deplorable, supported the organization’s rights with respect to searches and seizures. “Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all,” the ACLU said. “Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom. Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures.”Ms. Biden left the diary in the bedroom of a sober-living house in Florida where she was staying in 2020. After she left Florida for Pennsylvania as her father’s presidential campaign revved up into high gear, Harris, a financially strapped single mom and addict in recovery, moved into Ms. Biden’s former bedroom and discovered the diary. She then conscripted Kurlander, who had ties to Florida Republicans, to help her monetize her find. After the Trump campaign declined to purchase the diary and told Harris and Kurlander to contact the FBI, the pair instead shopped the diary to Project Veritas.Project Veritas never published the diary due to legal concerns and handed it over to the FBI. The organization did, though, leak the diary to a conservative blog called the National File. Excerpts from the diary included Ms. Biden detailing her drug use and mental health struggles stemming from being “sexualized” at a young age. Ms. Biden wrote about her outpatient addiction treatment and path to sobriety in text messages with her half-brother, Hunter, that were found on his now-notorious laptop. Both of the president’s living children are addicts in recovery who have in the past failed to pay their taxes.In December, it was disclosed that Ms. Biden failed to pay some income taxes between 2015 and 2021 and has had a lien placed on her property by a Pennsylvania court. The court documents were filed at the Philadelphia County courthouse.Fox News received the documents from a conservative activist and former aide to President Trump, Garrett Ziegler, who maintains a public database of the contents of the younger Mr. Biden’s laptop. He told Fox that the Biden family acts as if it is above the law by not paying taxes. “The scale is not anything like Hunter, but … Joe is constantly talking about how wealthy and connected people do not pay their fair share and can afford to pay more, and it just so happens that both of his living children did not pay their taxes,” Mr. Ziegler said.

Ashley Biden Calls Theft of Her Diary ‘Heinous Bullying,’ as Florida Woman Who Stole It Is Sentenced to One Month in Prison

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