Who first published or distributed the alleged Ashley Biden diary and when did that occur?

1. The theft, the buyer and the timeline

Reporting shows the notebook at the center of the controversy was stolen from a Florida property in 2020 while Ashley Biden was moving; two Florida residents later admitted stealing the diary and other items and selling them to Project Veritas ^{[2] [3] [5]}. Project Veritas acknowledged receiving material but — according to multiple fact-checkers and Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe — did not publish the full diary; instead, other outlets circulated pages and photographs beginning in November 2020 when The National File published what it said was a complete copy ^{[6] [1] [2]}.

2. Who first published the alleged diary

Available reporting identifies The National File as publishing what it presented as "a copy of the complete diary" in November 2020; Project Veritas is documented as the group that bought the stolen property but withheld publication of the full diary itself ^{[2] [1] [6]}. Fact-checkers and later news accounts trace the public circulation of images and excerpts back to that November 2020 period ^{[1] [2]}.

3. Project Veritas’s role and internal decisions

Project Veritas acquired the diary via intermediaries and has been central to the legal and journalistic dispute: founder James O’Keefe said the group could not confirm authorship in August 2022 and that it withheld publication ^[6]. Courts and reporting show the stolen items were sold to Project Veritas, and that defendants admitted the theft and sale in 2022 prosecutions ^{[5] [3]}.

4. Legal consequences and confirmations

Prosecutors won admissions from the two Florida residents who pleaded guilty to stealing the diary and transporting items across state lines, and court proceedings produced documentation — including Ashley Biden’s own letter to a judge — that Abi’s notebook had been taken and published online as photographs, which played into fact-checkers’ later reassessments ^{[5] [6] [1]}. Snopes updated its earlier “Unproven” rating to “True” after reviewing Ashley Biden’s April 2024 court letter acknowledging her private journal had been viewed online ^{[6] [7]}.

5. What exactly was published first — full diary or excerpts?

Sources indicate a conservative site, The National File, posted what it called a complete copy in November 2020; Project Veritas, while the purchaser, did not itself publish the diary in full and said it could not definitively authenticate authorship when speaking publicly later ^{[2] [6] [1]}. Photographs and excerpts of pages were widely circulated online after those initial publications and during subsequent legal fallout ^{[1] [6]}.

6. Conflicting claims and how sources frame authenticity

There are competing accounts: Project Veritas asserted uncertainty about provenance and chose not to release the full diary ^[6], while outlets that posted pages in 2020 treated the material as a genuine copy ^{[2] [1]}. Snopes and other fact-checkers initially treated authenticity as unproven but later changed their assessment after Ashley Biden’s court filing, highlighting that authentication and interpretation are distinct questions ^{[6] [7]}.

7. What the public record does not settle

Available sources do not mention a single, verifiable timestamped “first public posting” beyond The National File’s November 2020 publication claim and the broader wave of online circulation at that time; the precise chain of online reposts and who first posted specific photographs is not fully documented in these reports ^{[2] [1]}. Sources do not supply a contemporaneous, independently verified log showing the very first public URL or social-media account to share the diary images ^{[2] [1]}.

8. Why this matters now

The sequence matters because it affects legal responsibility, journalistic ethics and public interpretation: courts found the diary was stolen and sold for profit, Project Veritas’s involvement raises questions about intermediary roles in trafficking stolen property, and later court documents from Ashley Biden informed fact-checkers’ reassessments ^{[5] [6] [1]}. Different actors’ incentives are visible: The National File and other conservative outlets gained attention by publishing the material, while Project Veritas’s purchase became the legal hinge that produced guilty pleas from the thieves ^{[1] [5]}.

Limitations: reporting cited here draws from court filings, fact-checkers and news outlets but does not provide a minute-by-minute internet provenance log; if you want the single earliest timestamped online post, available sources do not mention an independently verified original URL beyond The National File’s November 2020 claim ^{[2] [1]}.