What exactly did Ashley Biden say about the contents and interpretation of her diary?

1. What Ashley Biden actually said to the court

In a letter filed April 8, 2024, Ashley Biden wrote that she will "forever have to deal with the fact that my personal journal can be viewed online," language that Snopes says provided the authentication missing from earlier reporting and prompted Snopes to change a prior "Unproven" verdict to "True" about the diary's provenance ^[1]. She also told the judge that her once‑private writings had been "constantly distorted and manipulated" and that people had "once‑grossly misinterpreted" her words, framing the leak as a deliberate campaign to misrepresent her ^[2].

2. How fact‑checkers treated her statement

Snopes and other fact‑checking outlets had previously concluded that while there was strong circumstantial evidence the diary existed, the contents published online lacked independent authentication; they revised that assessment after citing Ashley Biden’s court letter as corroboration that the diary belonged to her and that pages circulating online derived from it ^{[3] [1]}. Newsweek reported that Snopes changed its rating and noted the letter helped resolve earlier uncertainty about whether the diary was hers ^[2].

3. What she said about interpretation, not just ownership

Beyond acknowledging ownership, Ashley Biden emphasized that the content had been misused: she accused others of distorting her "stream‑of‑consciousness thoughts" to "peddle grotesque lies" and said false accusations had been made that "defame my character and those of the people I love" — a claim Newsweek highlighted when summarizing her plea for the court to punish the theft and sale of her diary ^[2].

4. How that changed public reporting and legal context

Her explicit court statement shifted reporting and fact‑checking: Snopes updated its verification status citing her letter, and media outlets revisited earlier caveats that had separated the diary’s existence from verification of the pages’ authenticity ^{[1] [2]}. Separately, criminal prosecutions ended with guilty pleas from two people who admitted stealing the diary and selling it to Project Veritas, which figures in court and press reporting about how the diary entered the public sphere ^{[4] [5]}.

5. Competing narratives and political uses of the diary

Conservative outlets had used published pages to attack President Biden and his family; Newsweek and other outlets documented political amplification and misreporting around the diary, and noted critics who claimed a cover‑up when those who stole it received sentences ^{[3] [2]}. Ashley Biden’s letter explicitly contests the right‑wing narrative by saying the theft’s purpose was to profit by distorting her private thoughts ^[2].

6. What the sources do not say

Available sources do not provide a line‑by‑line confirmation that every page published online is verbatim from her diary; earlier coverage had distinguished between the diary’s existence and authentication of particular photographs or transcriptions, and reporting relied on Ashley Biden’s letter as a turning point but did not present forensic proof of every excerpt ^{[1] [2]}. The Department of Justice or a court transcript providing full forensic authentication of every published page is not cited in the supplied reporting (p1_s6 — not found in current reporting).

7. Why her phrasing matters for credibility and politics

Her statement both established ownership for many fact‑checkers and attempted to reframe public understanding: owning the diary allowed outlets like Snopes to update verification, while her claims of distortion point to motive — she described the theft and sale as intended to create and monetize false narratives. That dual effect — authentication plus protest about misuse — explains why coverage shifted and why partisan actors treated the material differently ^{[1] [2]}.

Limitations: this analysis relies only on the supplied reporting and fact checks; it does not include any later forensic reports, full court filings beyond quoted passages, or independent verification beyond what Snopes and Newsweek summarized ^{[1] [2]}.