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Who was involved in stealing and leaking Ashley Biden's diary?
Executive summary
Available reporting identifies a small network of people and outlets implicated in the theft, sale and publication of Ashley Biden’s diary: a Florida woman, Aimee Harris, and an associate, Robert Kurlander, pleaded guilty to stealing items and selling the diary to Project Veritas for roughly $40,000; the diary’s pages were later published by the right‑wing site The National File [1] [2] [3]. Fact‑checkers like Snopes later said Ashley Biden’s court letter authenticated the diary’s existence and contents [4] [5].
1. The theft: who pleaded guilty and how prosecutors describe the scheme
Federal prosecutors say Aimee Harris stole personal items — including a diary — from a Delray Beach home where Ashley Biden had stored belongings in 2020; Harris and an associate, Robert Kurlander, then conspired to sell the materials to a conservative group for about $40,000, and both later pleaded guilty [1] [2]. News reports and court coverage describe this as a brazen criminal scheme in which the diary and other personal items were trafficked for profit rather than returned to the owner [3] [2].
2. The buyer and the publication chain: Project Veritas and The National File
Reporting indicates Project Veritas — the conservative activist media organization founded by James O’Keefe — ended up with the diary after the sale; Project Veritas has said it possessed the diary but declined to publish it, though communications between the group and parties in 2020 drew legal and investigative attention [6] [1]. Separately, the right‑wing blog The National File published images and pages of what it said was Ashley Biden’s diary in October/November 2020; multiple outlets traced those online pages back to that publication [4] [7].
3. The role of fact‑checking and Ashley Biden’s own statement
For a time the diary’s authenticity was treated as unproven by fact‑checkers; Snopes and other outlets initially said the existence of a diary had strong circumstantial evidence but that photographed pages online had not been authenticated [4] [7]. Snopes later revised the rating to “True” after Ashley Biden wrote a letter to a judge in April 2024 saying her personal journal had been stolen and could be viewed online — a piece of testimony fact‑checkers cited as authentication [4] [5].
4. Legal consequences and sentencing reported
Media outlets report that Aimee Harris was sentenced to a month in federal prison and three months of home confinement for her role in stealing and selling the diary; that sentencing revived attention to the chain by which the diary left Ashley Biden’s possession and entered conservative media channels [3] [2]. Prosecutors’ public statements and guilty pleas frame the incident as criminal theft and a commercial scheme to profit from private materials [1].
5. Disagreements, unanswered questions and investigative limits
Reporting shows disagreement about publication choices and responsibility: Project Veritas has acknowledged possessing the diary but has disputed publishing it itself, while The National File published pages online; some outlets connected the leak to Project Veritas operatives, and the FBI reportedly investigated aspects of the chain [6] [5]. Available sources do not provide a full, public forensic timeline of every handoff, nor do they publish contemporaneous internal records proving exactly who uploaded the first leaked images online; those specifics are “not found in current reporting” among the provided sources [6] [1].
6. How the story has been used politically and by media outlets
Conservative outlets and commentators have emphasized the diary’s contents as politically damaging and highlighted the sale to conservative groups; other outlets have focused on the criminality of the theft and the privacy harm to Ashley Biden [8] [2]. Fact‑checkers and mainstream outlets framed the issue around authentication and legality, while partisan outlets used the episode to advance competing narratives about media bias and political accountability [4] [1].
7. Takeaway for readers assessing competing claims
Core facts supported across multiple reports: the diary was taken from a Delray Beach residence, Aimee Harris and an associate pleaded guilty to stealing and selling the items, Project Veritas received the materials, and The National File published diary pages online; Ashley Biden later confirmed in court that the diary had been stolen [1] [3] [6] [4]. For precise chain‑of‑custody questions beyond those public admissions and guilty pleas, available reporting is incomplete and does not document every intermediary handoff or who first posted specific images online [6] [1].