What legal actions followed the leak of Ashley Biden's diary?

1. Criminal pleas: two people admit they sold the diary for $40,000

Prosecutors say two Florida residents pleaded guilty in August 2022 to participating in a scheme to peddle a diary and other belongings of Ashley Biden to Project Veritas for $40,000; court filings say Project Veritas staffers met with the sellers and that the group paid $20,000 apiece ^{[1] [2]}. News coverage and AP reporting summarized the government’s account that the items were taken from a Delray Beach home where Ashley Biden had stored belongings ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Sentencing of the seller Aimee Harris: brief prison term and home detention

Aimee Harris — the woman described in reporting as having stolen and sold the diary — pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 2022 and was later sentenced to a short federal jail term and home confinement after prosecutors detailed that she received $20,000 of the $40,000 paid for the items ^{[3] [2]}. The Guardian and other outlets reported her guilty plea and sentence in the context of the broader prosecution ^{[3] [2]}.

3. Department of Justice involvement and sentencing push

The Department of Justice sought prison time for Harris, characterizing the diary as containing “highly personal entries” and noting Project Veritas never published the diary though other outlets did ^[4]. DOJ filings and media coverage framed the prosecution as addressing theft and trafficking of another person’s private property rather than as an effort to prosecute news organizations for publication ^[4].

4. Project Veritas and O’Keefe: legal fights over sources, search warrants and privileged material

Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe were entangled in litigation and investigations: Project Veritas at times had possession or interest in the material and later turned over material to authorities, while O’Keefe’s lawyers demanded identification of government “leakers” after FBI searches and seizures; two of O’Keefe’s phones were seized amid the probe, according to reporting ^{[5] [6]}. Project Veritas has said it did not publish the diary because it could not verify authenticity, but courts have litigated whether First Amendment protections shielded the group from certain discovery ^{[5] [7]}.

5. Judge’s rulings expanded prosecutors’ access to documents

In December 2023, a federal judge rejected Project Veritas’ First Amendment claim in related litigation, a decision noted as allowing prosecutors potentially to review nearly 1,000 documents tied to the alleged theft and transfer of the diary ^[7]. That ruling moved discovery forward and narrowed the shield Project Veritas had asserted, according to reporting summarizing the court’s impact ^[7].

6. Civil and evidentiary threads: authenticity, victim testimony, and fact-check reversals

The diary’s existence and the authenticity of pages published online were contested for years. Fact-checkers initially listed the diary’s contents as unproven but Snopes later revised its rating based on a letter from Ashley Biden in court proceedings in which she said her private journal “can be viewed online,” a development media outlets cited when summarizing authenticity questions ^{[8] [9] [10]}. Reporting shows that questions about authenticity persisted alongside criminal prosecutions focused on theft and sale of the physical items ^{[8] [5]}.

7. Limitations in available reporting and competing perspectives

Available sources center on criminal charges against the sellers and litigation involving Project Veritas; they do not provide a full public record of any civil suits filed by Ashley Biden (available sources do not mention civil suits beyond the criminal prosecutions). Project Veritas staffers and O’Keefe have framed their actions as journalistic or driven by tipsters, while prosecutors treated the matter as theft and trafficking of stolen property — two competing framings that drove the different legal strategies and public messaging ^{[1] [5] [6]}.

8. What these legal actions aimed to achieve — and what they didn’t resolve

The criminal cases sought to punish and deter the theft and sale of private property; sentencing and DOJ requests emphasized accountability for those who stole and sold the materials ^{[4] [3]}. Courts meanwhile adjudicated how far reporters and activist journalists can resist discovery and claimed protections when materials are obtained via third parties, but the underlying questions about every published page’s provenance and the broader political fallout were not fully resolved by the prosecutions alone ^{[7] [5]}.

If you want, I can compile a timeline of the prosecutions, court filings and major filings from Project Veritas and the DOJ drawn from these sources.