What did The National File publish from Ashley Biden’s diary in November 2020 and how did it obtain the pages?
Executive summary
The National File published in late October/November 2020 what it described as the complete diary of Ashley Blazer Biden — a 112‑page document containing personal entries about drug use, relationships, and allegations about childhood showers with her father — and hosted facsimiles and a full-text release on its site [1] [2] [3]. The pages reached National File after being circulated among conservative media actors: Project Veritas acquired the physical diary for $40,000 and a Project Veritas employee or affiliate provided a digital copy to National File when Project Veritas declined to publish, while federal investigators later tied the diary’s movement to two Florida defendants who pleaded guilty to stealing and selling it [4] [5] [6] [7].
1. What National File published: the text, the framing, and the claims
National File posted what it called the “full release” of the diary, reproducing scanned pages and a transcribed “complete diary” that the outlet said ran to roughly 112 pages and described Ashley Biden’s struggles with addiction, intimate relationships, and a controversial passage about childhood showers with her father that National File and other right‑wing voices highlighted as explosive [2] [1] [3]. The outlet’s coverage framed the material as a political scoop in the run‑up to the 2020 election, promoting the diary as a document with potentially damaging implications for Joe Biden’s campaign and amplifying interpretations that the diary’s content should be read as confirmation of family misconduct [5] [8].
2. How National File obtained the pages: the Project Veritas connection
Reporting by multiple outlets and later court filings indicate Project Veritas purchased the diary for $40,000 and that a Project Veritas employee provided a digital copy to National File after Project Veritas opted not to publish the material itself; National File says a “whistleblower” gave it the document because Project Veritas would not run it [4] [5] [6]. Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has acknowledged his organization paid for a diary it could not conclusively verify belonged to Ashley Biden and that it chose not to publish the material, and The Intercept reported an internal PV employee gave National File access in October 2020 [6] [9].
3. The criminal case and chain of custody evidence
Federal prosecutors later charged and two Florida residents pleaded guilty to stealing the diary and transporting it across state lines, admitting to selling it to Project Veritas for the $40,000 payment; court materials and reporting say the diary came into the hands of the sellers after one moved into an apartment once occupied by Ashley Biden, and the physical diary was ultimately turned over to police in November 2020 [4] [1] [10]. Those guilty pleas and forfeiture of proceeds form the strongest public documentation of how the specific physical pages left private possession and entered the conservative media ecosystem [4] [7].
4. Authenticity, interpretation, and competing claims
Fact‑checking outlets such as Snopes have said reporting and circumstantial evidence “strongly” suggest the diary’s words were authored by Ashley Biden, and Snopes revised earlier “unproven” findings toward “true” as investigators and documents accumulated; at the same time Project Veritas stated it could not independently confirm ownership and originally withheld publication, and Ashley Biden later told a judge that photographs of her journal had caused her harm while contesting how her words were used [9] [11] [6]. National File itself has made additional claims — such as having a recording of Biden admitting the diary was hers and a handwriting expert’s verification — but those are assertions of the outlet rather than independently corroborated facts in the public record cited here [2].
5. Motives, media context, and why this matters
The timing and outlets involved — a far‑right blog publishing days before an election, a controversial activist‑journalism group buying the diary, and subsequent amplification on partisan platforms — underscore how the diary’s publication functioned within a political ecosystem aiming to influence public opinion during the 2020 campaign [5] [8]. Investigations, raids on Project Veritas‑related addresses, and the criminal plea deals show law enforcement interest in the diary’s theft and sale rather than the veracity of every claim inside it, leaving interpretation contested even as courts established a chain of custody for how the pages moved into the hands of National File and others [4] [7] [10].