A man and a woman from Florida pleaded guilty in a Manhattan federal court on Thursday to stealing the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter during the 2020 election, which they subsequently gave to the conservative group Project Veritas.
In their guilty plea, Aimee Harris and Jonathan Kurlander admitted they stole Ashley Biden’s diary and a storage card containing family pictures from a residence in Delray Beach, Florida, in September 2020. Harris and Ashley Biden had a mutual friend who let Biden keep the personal items at her home, where Harris was temporarily residing. Harris then texted Kurlander, whose relationship to her is unclear, and told him about the materials. He told her they would “make a SHIT TON of money” from selling the items, and the duo traveled to New York on Project Veritas’s dime to discuss what they had. After the meeting, court papers say, Project Veritas requested they return to Florida to get more of Biden’s property. Once they did, they turned it over to a Project Veritas employee in Florida who sent it to New York. Harris and Kurlander were ultimately paid $20,000 each by Project Veritas.
Although Project Veritas has not been charged with a crime related to the inquiry and the group denies any wrongdoing, the narrative presented in court stands in contrast to the group’s statement last year that they were “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.” The group — known for using misleading tactics to obtain compromising information on liberal figures — ultimately did not publish the diary and handed it over to Delray police after the 2020 election.
The pair are now cooperating with the Department of Justice investigation into how Project Veritas came to possess the diary. As part of the investigation, the FBI conducted a court-authorized search of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s Westchester home last November. Project Veritas responded in court by citing the First Amendment’s protections for members of the press.
Harris and Kurlander pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
