Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty in the 2020 theft of the diary of Ashley Biden, daughter of then-presidential candidate Joe Biden, The
New York Times
reported on Thursday .
Earlier in the day, a statement from the Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58,
"pleaded guilty today to the interstate transportation of stolen property involving the theft of personal effects of an immediate family member of a then former senior government official who was a candidate in a national election”.
"Ethical and legal"
Among the stolen personal effects, the press release, which does not identify Ashley Biden by name, lists in particular a handwritten diary, a memory card containing family photos and a cell phone.
The daughter of the current president had left her personal effects in the spring of 2020 with a friend in Florida, with whom Aimee Harris then stayed.
Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander are accused of trying to sell the diary to Donald Trump's campaign team, who reportedly rejected their offer.
They then turned to Project Veritas, an ultra-conservative group known for its support of the Republican billionaire and for its publicity stunts involving the disclosure of personal data.
The group reacted in a Thursday statement on its Facebook page defending its collection of information as
“ethical and legal”
.
Project Veritas had never published details of the diary, but according to The
New York Times
tried weeks before the 2020 presidential election to trick Ashley Biden into admitting the document was indeed her diary.
An FBI investigation was triggered when the conservative site National File published the contents of the diary that included personal details from Ashley Biden's life.
National File claims to have obtained the documents from someone within Project Veritas.
In October 2020, just before the presidential election, another child of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, was involved in a leak of personal documents.
The conservative tabloid
The New York Post
claimed to have obtained a copy of the hard drive of a laptop that the son of the future president would have left in a repair store and would never have recovered.
According to the
New York Post
, the hard drive contained evidence of Joe Biden intervening on his son's behalf in his business in Ukraine.
The documents in the computer are believed to be part of an ongoing FBI investigation that is trying to unravel Hunter Biden's financial activities.