What legal outcomes resulted from the theft and sale of Ashley Biden’s diary, and did any court find the diary’s contents authentic?
Executive summary
Two Florida residents pleaded guilty in a scheme to steal and sell personal items belonging to Ashley Biden and one of those women, Aimee Harris, was sentenced to one month in federal prison, home confinement and ordered to forfeit money; Project Veritas has lost key First Amendment and reporter-privilege claims in federal court and prosecutors may obtain extensive seized materials [1] [2] [3]. Courts have not issued a standalone judicial ruling that formally “authenticated” the diary’s contents as a matter of law, although Ashley Biden’s own court letter prompted prominent fact-checkers to revise their assessments of the diary’s authenticity [4] [5].
1. Criminal pleas and sentences: what the courts punished
Federal prosecutors secured guilty pleas from two Florida individuals who admitted to taking Ashley Biden’s diary and other belongings and selling them to Project Veritas; the most-publicized defendant, Aimee Harris, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and was sentenced in April 2024 to one month in prison, three months of home confinement, repayment/forfeiture of $20,000 and three years’ probation [1] [6] [7]. Reporting makes clear the government framed Harris’s conduct as a for-profit scheme to traffic in stolen personal property rather than as political journalism, and the sentence reflects prosecutorial decisions not to seek long prison terms in the federal case [1] [8].
2. Project Veritas: civil and constitutional fights that faltered in court
Project Veritas has vigorously fought disclosure of seized material and asserted First Amendment and reporter’s-privilege defenses, but a Manhattan federal judge, Analisa Torres, rejected the group’s First Amendment claim and allowed prosecutors to seek nearly 1,000 documents; Project Veritas has said it would consider appeal and, as of the rulings cited, had not been criminally charged [2] [8]. The group’s litigation posture — that undercover reporting and source confidentiality protect it from ordinary investigative reach — was explicitly found by the court to be inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent, undercutting a shield defense in this instance [2].
3. Appeals and device searches: privilege denied on appeal
On appeal the Second Circuit affirmed lower-court decisions denying journalist-privilege claims for some electronic devices seized from James O’Keefe and associates, a ruling that flowed in part from admissions by the two people who stole the diary and thereby weakened claims of protecting a confidential source [3]. The appellate and district-court rulings together opened the door to broader review of Project Veritas-related materials by investigators, including phones seized in FBI searches — a legal outcome that increases prosecutorial access even if Project Veritas itself has not been indicted [2] [3].
4. Authentication: courts versus journalism and fact-checkers
No court has issued a formal forensic judgment that declares the diary’s contents independently authenticated as evidence in a criminal or civil proceeding; however, Ashley Biden submitted a letter to a New York court in which she described the journal as hers and decried its theft and exploitation, and fact-checkers (most prominently Snopes) revised prior “unproven” ratings to “true” based on that letter and related court filings [4] [5]. News outlets and legal reporting note a distinction between judicial authentication and a subject’s assertion in court: courts have relied on procedural findings tied to the theft and transactional record rather than issuing a standalone ruling validating every published page as legally authenticated [9] [10].
5. Competing narratives, incentives and what the rulings mean
The legal outcomes reflect interlocking incentives: prosecutors prosecuted the theft and sale as criminal wrongdoing, courts limited journalist-shield defenses once confessing thieves removed the cloak of source protection, and Project Veritas and partisan outlets asserted broader free-press and authenticity claims that courts have not endorsed [8] [3] [2]. Meanwhile, some right-leaning outlets and actors have continued to publish or amplify the diary’s contents and independent venues claim they possess corroborating materials, but those outlets’ assertions (for example, later National File claims) are reporting claims rather than independent court findings and should not be conflated with judicial authentication [11] [9]. In short: the theft and sale produced criminal convictions and sentences for the sellers and significant legal wins for prosecutors seeking records, while the question of formal court-authenticated proof of every published diary entry remains unresolved in judicial orders even as the owner’s court statements led news fact-checkers to treat the diary as authentic [1] [2] [4].