I want to know if Ashley Biden ever confirmed what she wrote in her diary about inappropriate showering with her father?
Executive summary
Ashley Biden has publicly authenticated that a stolen handwritten journal belonged to her in court filings, and fact‑checkers such as Snopes now treat the diary’s existence and attribution to her as confirmed [1] [2]. That confirmation, however, is of the diary’s authenticity — not an independent forensic or investigative verification of every intimate claim inside it — and other outlets note authorities (including the FBI) never corroborated the salacious content beyond the document itself [2] [3].
1. What Ashley Biden appears to have confirmed — the diary’s existence and authorship
In written court materials and a letter to a judge, Ashley Biden acknowledged that a personal journal of hers had been stolen and was viewable online, language Snopes and other outlets cite as establishing that the diary is authentic and authored by her [1] [4] [2]. Snopes revised prior “unproven” findings and concluded published court documents — including what the reporting calls Ashley’s written testimony and court letter — demonstrate the reality of the diary and therefore treat claims framed as “the diary is hers” as true [1] [2].
2. What the diary actually says about showering and how sources report it
The passages that circulated in 2020 and thereafter include a line attributed to the diary describing showers with her father as “probably not appropriate,” language that the reporting reproduces when summarizing the leaked pages [1] [2]. That phrasing — brief, ambiguous and not a formal allegation in a legal filing — is the textual nucleus that has driven both viral claims and counterclaims [2].
3. Important distinction: authentic diary versus independent corroboration of its content
Multiple fact‑checks and reporting stress a critical distinction: acknowledging the diary is real and written by Ashley Biden is different from law‑enforcement or journalistic corroboration that the events described actually happened [2] [3]. PolitiFact notes the FBI’s public statements about a theft-and-sale prosecution did not amount to confirmation of any specific salacious claim in the diary, and the agency did not endorse the truth of the contents [3]. Snopes likewise framed its update around authentication of the document rather than independent proof of the events the diary describes [1] [2].
4. How partisan actors have used the confirmation and their implicit agendas
Right‑leaning outlets and social accounts seized on Ashley’s court letter and Snopes’ reversal to present the diary’s intimate lines as de facto proof of abuse, using charged labels and political insinuation to amplify the claim [5] [6]. Investigative reporting and fact‑checkers caution against that leap: confirmation of authorship allows a document to be part of the evidentiary record, but partisan actors benefit politically by equating document authenticity with incontrovertible proof of criminal conduct — an implicit agenda noted by both Snopes and PolitiFact [1] [3].
5. The role of intermediaries and prior reporting caveats
The chain of how the diary entered the public sphere — including reporting about Project Veritas’ possession of materials and prosecutions of individuals accused of stealing and selling the journal — has complicated the provenance story and the media narrative [1] [2]. Early coverage repeatedly emphasized that photographic facsimiles, social‑media excerpts, or FBI press releases are not, on their own, the same as a full forensic authentication of every line, a caveat that persisted even after Snopes’ update [2] [3].
6. Bottom line: what can be stated with sourced confidence
It is factual, per court documents and reporting cited by Snopes, that Ashley Biden’s handwritten journal exists and that she acknowledged its theft and public exposure in court materials, which has led fact‑checkers to say the diary’s attribution to her is confirmed [1] [2]. It is also factual, per reporting, that the diary includes a line characterizing showers with her father as “probably not appropriate” [1] [2]. What cannot be asserted from the provided reporting is an independent, law‑enforcement corroboration of the underlying conduct beyond the diary itself; prominent fact‑checkers and PolitiFact explicitly note that the FBI and prosecutors did not validate the diary’s specific salacious claims when publicizing an unrelated plea in a theft case [2] [3].