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What did Ashley Biden explicitly say about the authenticity of the diary in her public remarks?
Executive summary
Ashley Biden has publicly acknowledged that the diary stolen from her was her “personal private journal,” language that fact-checkers such as Snopes say led them to change an earlier “Unproven” rating to “True” about the diary’s existence and provenance [1]. However, sources say Ashley’s statements emphasize the theft and misuse of the diary and her distress over how its contents have been “distorted and manipulated,” and reporting and fact-checking note there remains disagreement about whether every excerpt circulating online has been independently authenticated and how those excerpts should be interpreted [2] [3].
1. What Ashley Biden explicitly said in public filings
In an April 8 letter to a federal judge referenced by multiple outlets, Ashley Biden described the journal as her “personal private journal” and wrote that she “will forever have to deal with the fact that my personal journal can be viewed online,” language that Snopes says prompted it to change its prior “Unproven” finding about the diary’s authenticity to “True” [1] [4]. Newsweek and other outlets quote and summarize that same letter, noting she acknowledged the diary was hers while also characterizing the entries as “innermost thoughts” used for personal healing [2].
2. How fact-checkers interpreted her words
Snopes and related fact-checkers treated Ashley Biden’s sentencing-letter language as an admission that the diary existed and belonged to her, and that led Snopes to revise a prior assessment that had flagged the diary’s contents as not independently authenticated [3] [1]. Snopes’ reporting notes that earlier editions described “strong evidence” the diary existed but said the “authenticity of photographs purported to be from a diary is a separate question” — a distinction Snopes revisited after Ashley’s court letter [3].
3. What she stressed about context and misuse
Ashley Biden’s public remarks — as reported by Newsweek and other outlets — stressed that the diary represented private, “stream-of-consciousness” writing and that its contents had been “grossly misinterpreted” and “constantly distorted and manipulated” when used publicly to attack her and others [2]. Reporting indicates she framed the theft and dissemination as a violation intended to enrich or benefit those who sold or published the material [2] [5].
4. What was not claimed or not found in reporting
Available sources do not quote Ashley Biden saying, in public remarks, that every excerpt circulating online has been independently forensically authenticated; instead, her statements in filings acknowledge ownership and lament the theft and misuse [3] [1]. Available sources do not include a separate public press conference or interview in which she walked through specific passages and independently vouched for each published page’s origin beyond calling it her journal in court filings [4] [1].
5. How others used her language — competing perspectives
Conservative outlets and commentators seized on Ashley’s written acknowledgment to assert the diary and its controversial passages are “confirmed,” citing Snopes’ policy change and her letter as proof [6] [7]. Conversely, outlets such as Snopes and Newsweek emphasized the narrower point leading to their revisions: that Ashley’s court letter authenticated that the diary belonged to her and had been stolen, but that context and interpretation of excerpts remain contested and that earlier public claims of full forensic authentication were overstated [3] [2].
6. Legal and reporting context that shapes what she said
Court filings arose in the context of prosecutions of two Florida residents convicted of stealing and trying to sell items, including the diary, to Project Veritas; prosecutors’ filings and reporting on that case underpin much of the documented timeline and the factual basis for her statement that the diary was hers [8] [4]. Snopes’ revision was specifically tied to Ashley’s sentencing-letter testimony in that legal process rather than a standalone public relations statement [1].
7. Bottom line and open questions
The concrete public claim Ashley Biden made — as cited repeatedly in reporting and by Snopes — is that the stolen journal was her “personal private journal” and that she suffers ongoing harm from its theft and exposure [1] [2]. Whether that single acknowledgement settles debates about the provenance of every widely circulated photograph or excerpt remains contested in reporting: fact-checkers treated her letter as sufficient to change a prior “Unproven” finding about authorship, while also noting that independent authentication of individual published pages and the interpretation of their contents were not fully resolved [3] [1].