A Florida woman has been sentenced to one month in prison for her role in stealing a diary that belonged to President Joe Biden’s daughter and selling it to undercover journalist group Project Veritas weeks before the 2020 election.
In a ruling handed down on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered Aimee Harris, a resident of Palm Beach, Florida, to report to prison in July while her two young children would be out on vacation.
The prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, including three months of home detention, along with participation in an outpatient substance abuse program. The 41-year-old was also ordered to forfeit $20,000 that was paid to her by Project Veritas.
Prosecutors initially recommended the federal court in New York City not to impose a prison term on Ms. Harris. However, after her repeated failures to show up at numerous sentencing dates, they adjusted their sentencing request to include a guidelines range sentence of four to 10 months in prison to “promote respect for the law and specific and general deterrence.”
Ms. Harris claimed that the no-shows were due to her responsibility to care for her children, ages 8 and 6. The prosecutors dismissed the claim as false and misleading, noting that the children’s father has complained that she has not taken them to school in weeks in breach of a court order from her home state of Florida.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” a teary Ms. Harris said after the prosecutor suggested a prison sentence, reported The Associated Press.
“I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.
“Ms. Harris is not the victim in this case,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman. “Ms. Biden is the victim in this case.”
In August 2022, Ms. Harris pleaded guilty to conspiring with 60-year-old Robert Kurlander in September 2020 to steal Ashley Biden’s belongings from a private home in Delray Beach, Florida. Ms. Harris said she took the diary and other personal items and tried to sell it.
Ms. Harris and her co-defendant pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, a federal crime punishable by up to five years in prison.
“I found property, including a journal, belonging to another person in a place where I was living. Knowing that I did not have a right to take the property, I agreed with another person and did cause a journal to be transported from Florida to New York City,” Ms. Harris said in court.
“The value of the journal was more than $5,000. I know this because I did not directly receive the money for the journal; the organization that purchased it sent two payments of $10,000 each for my benefit to lawyers that were representing me in a child custody matter.”
She added, “I sincerely apologize for my actions and know that what I did was wrong illegal.”
Project Veritas
Founded in 2010 by investigative journalist James O'Keefe, Project Veritas has gained a reputation by using undercover tactics to expose anti-conservative bias in schools, corporations, and the media.Project Veritas is not explicitly mentioned in the charging document, nor have any of its staffers been charged with a crime.
In an earlier court filing, Project Veritas said it came into possession of Ms. Biden’s diary in 2020 after Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander contacted the group through a proxy.
“Prior to this contact, neither James O'Keefe nor anyone at Project Veritas knew or had even heard of [Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander],” said Paul Calli, a lawyer for the journalist outfit. “Those two individuals represented that they had material (including a diary) that Ashley Biden had abandoned at a house where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Florida.”
“Project Veritas had no involvement with how those two individuals acquired the diary. All of Project Veritas’ knowledge about how [Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander] came to possess the diary came from [Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander] themselves,” the attorney said.
Mr. O'Keefe, who is no longer with Project Veritas, has said the group ultimately returned the diary to an attorney representing Ms. Biden. without publishing any information from it.
“In short, we did nothing wrong other than the non-crime of investigating a story, as journalists do,” Mr. O'Keefe told members of Congress during a May 2022 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
