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Details from the leaked Ashley Biden diary 2020
Executive summary
Available reporting establishes that a personal diary belonging to Ashley Biden was stolen in 2020, sold to Project Veritas for reportedly $40,000, and pieces of its contents were later published by outlets such as The National File; a Florida woman who pleaded guilty to stealing and selling the diary was sentenced in 2024 [1] [2] [3]. Major fact‑checkers and outlets have described the diary’s contents as intimate and sometimes incendiary, and the diary’s authenticity was contested for years though Snopes later revised a prior rating after Ashley Biden’s court letter acknowledging the theft and discussing the journal [4] [5] [6].
1. The physical trail: how the diary left Ashley Biden’s possession
Prosecutors say Ashley Biden left personal belongings, including a diary, at a friend’s Delray Beach residence in spring 2020; two Florida residents later admitted stealing those items and selling them, first trying the Trump campaign and then selling them to Project Veritas for about $40,000, according to court filings and reporting [3] [1] [2].
2. Who bought it, who published it, and what was withheld
Court testimony and reporting indicate Project Veritas paid roughly $40,000 for items that included the diary; Project Veritas did not publish the full diary, and a separate right‑wing site, The National File, later published what it claimed were diary pages in November 2020 [4] [7] [8]. Project Veritas executives reportedly had reservations about publishing because they could not independently verify authorship [4] [9].
3. What’s actually in the leaked pages that circulated
Published excerpts described intimate material about addiction recovery, references to sexual trauma, and entries saying the writer felt “hyper‑sexualized” and questioned whether she had been molested; those excerpts were widely quoted by outlets and used in political attack pieces in 2020 [4] [8]. Reporting also notes the diary chronicled recovery from substance use, which sources say was part of why the pages attracted attention [2].
4. Authentication disputes and a key shift in fact‑checking
For years the diary’s provenance and content were disputed: Project Veritas and other actors were reluctant to confirm authenticity, and fact‑checkers marked claims “unproven.” Snopes and other fact‑checkers revisited those judgments after documents filed in court and a public letter from Ashley Biden; Snopes revised a prior “unproven” finding to “true” based on Ashley’s April 2024 letter acknowledging the theft and referencing the journal, though reporting stresses the contents had been “constantly distorted and manipulated” [4] [5] [10].
5. Legal consequences for the sellers and what courts found
Two Florida residents pleaded guilty in a scheme that prosecutors said involved transporting and selling Ashley Biden’s diary and other items; one seller, Aimee Harris, was sentenced in April 2024 to one month in prison and three months home confinement after admitting she sold items including the diary to Project Veritas [1] [2]. DOJ filings described the diary as containing “highly personal entries” taken from a Delray Beach home where Ashley had temporarily stayed [3].
6. Media framing, political use, and competing agendas
Right‑wing outlets used leaked pages to attack Joe Biden’s family during the 2020 campaign, while conservative and tabloid coverage later framed Ashley’s later acknowledgements as vindication [7] [11]. Project Veritas’s purchase and withholding of the material, plus attempts to sell to political campaigns, introduce a clear political motive and profit incentive into how the diary left private hands and entered public discourse [4] [1]. Fact‑checking organizations and mainstream outlets emphasized caution because of those incentives and because excerpts could be selectively presented [5] [8].
7. What reporting does not confirm or resolve
Available sources do not provide a fully authenticated, independently verified public transcript of the complete diary; multiple outlets note that while Ashley Biden acknowledged the theft and her writings, reporting also states parts of the diary’s circulation involved distortion and selective publication [4] [10]. Sources do not provide a definitive forensic report publicly confirming every published excerpt as unchanged from the original [5].
8. Takeaway for readers: weighing facts, privacy, politics
The documented criminal scheme to steal and sell Ashley Biden’s diary, Project Veritas’s purchase and nonpublication, the later public sentencing of a seller, and fact‑checkers’ re‑assessments together demonstrate the diary was real and stolen — but the path from private journal to partisan headlines involved actors with clear political and financial motives, and reporting cautions that excerpts were selectively used and sometimes distorted [1] [4] [8]. Readers should treat isolated published snippets as partial, view authentication claims against court records and reputable fact‑checks, and recognize the privacy and legal dimensions in reporting on stolen personal materials [3] [5].