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Who authenticated Ashley Biden's diary?
Executive summary
Public reporting indicates the physical diary stolen from Ashley Biden was sold to Project Veritas after two Florida residents admitted stealing and transporting it, and Ashley Biden herself has acknowledged the journal was hers in court-related correspondence; however, major fact‑checking outlets and news organizations have long said the specific authentication of the pages published online remained contested, with Project Veritas and some conservative outlets claiming verification while other outlets and authorities did not confirm the contents [1] [2] [3]. Available sources do not name a single, universally accepted authenticator whose work ended the dispute; instead the record shows competing claims and legal developments tied to theft and sale of the diary [4] [5].
1. How the diary entered public view — a criminal case, not a lab report
The key documentary trail in public reporting is a criminal prosecution: two Florida residents pleaded guilty to stealing personal items, including the diary, and selling them to Project Veritas, and one seller, Aimee Harris, was later sentenced in relation to that scheme [4] [6]. That chain of custody — theft, interstate transport and sale — is the basis for statements by prosecutors and for news accounts, not a forensic authentication report issued by a neutral government agency [4] [3]. Reporting from PBS and Politico emphasizes the prosecutorial facts of the theft and sale rather than asserting a forensic fingerprint on the diary’s contents [6] [4].
2. Project Veritas’s role and claims of verification
Project Veritas has been identified in multiple accounts as the purchaser and holder of the material sold by the defendants; its founder, James O’Keefe, has said his organization received the diary from tipsters and chose not to publish everything because of authentication concerns, while other conservative outlets later published copies they said came via Project Veritas sources [1] [7] [2]. Some outlets friendly to the material — notably the National File — have asserted they employed a handwriting expert and possess recordings and a whistleblower claiming Ashley Biden admitted ownership; those are claims reported by the outlets themselves, and not corroborated in mainstream fact‑checking or government filings cited in these sources [8]. Available sources do not confirm an independent, widely accepted forensic authentication conducted by a neutral third party.
3. Ashley Biden’s own statements and how they changed reporting
Fact‑checking outlets changed their assessments after Ashley Biden’s own public statements. Snopes updated a prior “unproven” rating to “true” in April 2024 on the narrower point that Ashley Biden acknowledged the diary was hers, citing a letter she wrote to a judge saying her personal journal had been stolen and was online — a development that strengthened the claim the diary existed and belonged to her [5] [2]. That admission by Biden shifts the conversation from “does the diary belong to her?” toward debates about the accuracy and context of specific published pages; the admission addressed ownership but did not settle broader questions about the provenance or independent forensic authentication of every published page [5] [2].
4. What government agencies and major outlets did — and did not — declare
Reporting repeatedly notes that law enforcement statements and the plea deals in the theft case did not provide a forensic seal of approval for the diary’s content. PolitiFact and Newsweek highlight that the FBI’s public filings and the plea deals focused on criminal conduct — theft and interstate transportation of items — and did not verify the salacious or contested statements attributed to the diary’s pages [7] [3]. Mainstream outlets and fact‑checkers therefore treated the diary’s existence and ownership differently from the question of whether every published excerpt was authenticated [3] [2].
5. Conflicting narratives, partisan incentives and the limits of available reporting
The story has strongly partisan contours: conservative outlets and Project Veritas have incentives to publicize and validate the diary, while other outlets and fact checkers historically emphasized the need for independent verification before repeating sensitive allegations [8] [2]. News organizations like Politico and PBS framed the publicly verified facts around the theft and sale, while Snopes and other fact‑checkers revised their positions as Ashley Biden herself acknowledged ownership — showing how new, court‑adjacent statements changed assessments without producing a single independent forensic authentication widely cited across outlets [4] [5] [6]. Readers should note those different incentives when weighing claims about who “authenticated” the diary.
6. Bottom line for the original question: who authenticated it?
Available reporting does not point to a single, widely accepted forensic authority that validated all the published diary pages; instead, the documented chain in mainstream sources shows two Florida residents admitted stealing the diary and selling it to Project Veritas, and Ashley Biden later acknowledged the diary belonged to her, which prompted fact‑check updates about ownership — but questions about independent, universally accepted authentication of every published page remain unresolved in the sources provided [4] [1] [5]. Claims by outlets such as National File about handwriting experts or whistleblower recordings are reported by those outlets but are not corroborated across the mainstream sources cited here [8] [2].