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Timeline of Ashley Biden diary discovery and leak
Executive summary
Reporting indicates Ashley Biden’s personal diary was taken from a Florida residence in the summer of 2020 and — according to prosecutors and court records — sold to Project Veritas for about $40,000; a Florida woman, Aimee Harris, later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a month in jail for her role [1][2]. Fact-checkers long treated the diary’s public facsimiles as unproven but revised assessments in 2024 after Ashley Biden acknowledged that her private journal had been viewed online in a court letter [3][4].
1. How the diary first surfaced: a November 2020 publication and Project Veritas ties
A month before the 2020 election, the conservative site The National File published what it said was a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary; reporting by outlets including The Intercept and New York Magazine tied that leak back to a supply chain that ended at Project Veritas, a conservative activist organization [5][4]. Project Veritas itself did not publicly publish the complete diary, but prosecutors later described a scheme by Florida residents to sell the materials to the group for payment [2].
2. Theft, transport and the criminal case: what prosecutors say
Federal prosecutors say the diary and other personal items were stolen from a Delray Beach, Florida home in summer 2020 and transported across state lines; two Florida residents pleaded guilty to charges connected to that theft and sale, and Aimee Harris was sentenced in April 2024 to one month in prison and three months home confinement after admitting she received part of a $40,000 payment [1][2][6].
3. Public circulation and early verification questions
After November 2020 facsimiles circulated online, fact-checkers warned that the existence of a diary and the authenticity of specific posted pages were separate questions; early fact-checks described the public claims as “unproven” because the materials had not been independently authenticated [7][4]. That caveat framed media coverage for years because copies in partisan outlets and anonymous postings made provenance difficult to establish [5].
4. Ashley Biden’s court letter and fact-checkers’ reassessment
In April 2024 Ashley Biden wrote to a New York judge that her “personal journal can be viewed online,” language that prompted Snopes and other fact-checkers to change prior ratings from “unproven” to “true” regarding the diary’s public existence; reporters have cited her letter as strong circumstantial confirmation that the journal seen online was hers [3][4]. The June–April 2024 sequence of court filings, sentencing and subsequent reporting is the key evidentiary pivot in public records [1][4].
5. What sources agree on — and where they differ
Mainstream news outlets and court records consistently report the theft, the $40,000 payment tied to Project Veritas, guilty pleas and Harris’s sentence [1][2][6]. Fact-checkers and outlets initially disagreed about whether the publicly posted pages were authentic; that dispute narrowed after Ashley Biden’s April 2024 letter, which fact-checkers cite as the basis to treat the diary’s online existence as confirmed [3][4]. Some conservative commentary frames the leak as a major political scandal; other outlets stress legal wrongdoing in stealing and selling private property [8][5].
6. Timeline — key dates to anchor the narrative
- Summer 2020: Prosecutors say diary and items were stolen from a Delray Beach residence [1].
- October–November 2020: The National File published an alleged “copy of the complete diary” in the final month of the presidential campaign [5][4].
- 2022: Two Florida residents pleaded guilty in the scheme to steal and traffic the items [9].
- April 2024: Ashley Biden’s letter to a judge acknowledged that her private journal had been viewed online; around the same time prosecutors’ actions led to sentencing [3][1].
- April 2024: Aimee Harris sentenced to one month in prison and home confinement [1][2].
7. Open questions and limits of available reporting
Available sources document theft, sale, prosecution and Ashley Biden’s court letter acknowledging public view of her journal, but they do not provide a complete, independently authenticated transcript tying every online page to an original manuscript under forensic review; fact-checkers emphasize that the provenance and selective publication by partisan outlets complicated verification [7][4]. Sources do not, in the materials provided here, settle questions about how much of the diary’s contents were altered, selectively excerpted, or the chain of custody inside Project Veritas after purchase [5][2].
8. Why this timeline mattered politically
The diary’s appearance in late 2020 intersected with a high‑stakes presidential campaign and was cited by partisan actors as a political weapon; conservative outlets promoted the material while courts and prosecutors pursued the theft as a criminal act, and fact-checkers’ evolving assessments illustrate how legal records and a victim’s statement reshaped public judgments over time [5][1][3].
If you want, I can convert these points into a compact visual timeline or pull direct quotes from the April 2024 court letter and the April 2024 sentencing to anchor a more detailed chronology (not included here because full text excerpts aren’t in the provided sources).