What specific claims has Ashley Biden made about Joe Biden's behavior and finances, and where were they published?
Executive summary
Ashley Biden’s most concrete public assertions about her father consist of intimate diary entries that were leaked and later authenticated in court filings, in which she described family dynamics and intrusive behavior she found troubling — including an entry observers interpreted as calling some childhood showers “probably inappropriate” — and those entries were published by right‑wing outlets after Project Veritas acquired the material and sparked an FBI inquiry into its sale [1] [2]. There is no record in the provided reporting of Ashley Biden making public, documented claims that Joe Biden engaged in financial misconduct; allegations about the Bidens’ finances come from congressional Republicans and investigative reporting, not from Ashley herself [3] [4] [5].
1. The source: a leaked personal diary and how it surfaced
The documents at the center of Ashley Biden’s public role in these controversies are diary pages that a right‑leaning website, The National File, published during the 2020 campaign after Project Veritas paid for material it claimed to have obtained, and court records later confirmed the existence of those diary entries [1]. Reporting also records that Project Veritas paid roughly $40,000 for the alleged diary and that the FBI opened an investigation into a woman who allegedly sold Ashley Biden’s diary, indicating law‑enforcement scrutiny of how the material changed hands [1] [2].
2. What Ashley Biden’s writings said about family behavior
Among the passages that drew public attention were personal reflections in which Ashley Biden described feeling “hyper‑sexualized” and recounted awkward or troubling childhood experiences; one specific line, reported in multiple fact‑checks and court filings, indicated that she called certain childhood showers with her father “probably inappropriate,” language that has been widely circulated and scrutinized [1]. Snopes reports that their fact check was revised to “True” after a letter authored by Ashley Biden and published in court proceedings and carried by The New York Times corroborated aspects of the diary’s provenance and some of its contents [1].
3. Publication channels and verification disputes
The initial public dissemination came via The National File, a partisan outlet, and Project Veritas’s involvement raised additional questions about motive and chain of custody; independent fact‑checking organizations traced the dissemination, confirmed the document’s circulation, and noted the complicated provenance and legal disputes surrounding its sale [1]. Media outlets and court filings later provided partial verification, but the competitive political context — a diary released near an election and handled by politically active groups — has been repeatedly flagged as a complicating factor in assessing intent and accuracy [1] [2].
4. What Ashley Biden has not been shown to have accused her father of (financially)
The reporting assembled here does not show Ashley Biden publicly accusing Joe Biden of financial corruption or involvement in his family’s business dealings; such financial allegations have been advanced by House Republicans and investigative reporting into Hunter Biden’s activities, not by Ashley Biden’s own public statements or diary excerpts in the sources provided [3] [4] [5]. The Oversight Committee materials claim broad patterns of alleged financial misconduct by the Biden family, but those are committee assertions and not claims authored by Ashley Biden herself [3] [4].
5. Context, agendas, and limits of the record
The provenance and handling of Ashley Biden’s diary intersect with partisan actors who had clear incentives to maximize political damage: Project Veritas and right‑wing outlets published the material during a heated campaign season, and Republican oversight reports have separately pursued financial narratives about the Bidens — two parallel storylines that are often conflated in public discussion [1] [3]. The available sources confirm the diary’s existence and some matching court filings [1], they document the diary’s sale and a related FBI inquiry [2], and they show vigorous partisan claims about Biden family finances originating with congressional Republicans and media investigations rather than with Ashley Biden’s own published allegations [3] [4] [5]. Where the provided reporting is silent — for example, any contemporaneous, detailed public manifesto from Ashley alleging financial wrongdoing by her father — this account does not invent claims; it simply reports the limitation of the record.