Two Florida residents pled guilty on Thursday to stealing the diary of Ashley Biden, President Joe Biden’s daughter, before the 2020 election and selling the property to Project Veritas for $40,000.
Aimee Harris, 40, of Palm Beach, Florida, and Robert Kurlander, 58, of Jupiter, Florida, both pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, the Justice Department said in a statement. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
The statement read that in September of 2020, Harris was residing at a private residence in Delray, Beach, Florida, where Biden was also staying.
“The Victim had stored the property, including a handwritten journal containing highly personal entries, tax records, a digital storage card containing private family photographs, and a cellphone, among other things, in a private residence,” the DOJ said in a statement.
After Harris had taken the diary, she enlisted Kurlander to help her sell it, and the two pitched the sale to an “organization” based in Mamaroneck, New York, the statement read, appearing to refer to Project Veritas.
The “organization” paid for the pair to travel to New York City and requested that they return to the private residence to take more of Biden’s property, according to the DOJ. The “organization” then paid the pair $20,000 each for the stolen property, the statement read.
The pair agreed to each give up $20,000 as part of the plea deal and agreed to cooperate with the government.
FBI assistant director Michael J. Driscoll said in the statement, “as they’ve admitted with today’s pleas, the defendants conspired to steal an individual’s personal property, which they subsequently sold to a third party and delivered across state lines. As a consequence of their actions, they now face punishment in the federal criminal justice system for their crimes.”
Project Veritas and its founder James O’Keefe previously denied having any part in stealing the diary, saying, the organization “was not involved in any theft of property and that all of Project Veritas’s information on how the confidential sources found the property came from the sources themselves.”
Project Veritas never published the diary.