Ashley Biden speaks alongside her father US President Joe Biden during a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Tuesday, June 13, 2023.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Florida woman who stole a diary and other items belonging to Ashley Biden — President Joe Biden’s daughter — weeks before the 2020 election and then sold them to a right-wing media group was sentenced Tuesday to one month in federal prison and three months of house arrest.
Aimee Harris, 41, was also ordered to forfeit $20,000 and serve three years probation at her sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where a lawyer for Ashley Biden was in the audience.
Before Harris was sentenced, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman told Judge Laura Taylor Swain that Harris had shown a “pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system” and was motivated to steal Ashley Biden’s property “for so much money.” to earn as much as possible”. “and to politically harm President Biden, The Associated Press reported.
“She wanted to harm Ms. Biden’s father,” Sobelman said, the AP reported.
Prosecutors had asked that Harris be sentenced to between four and 10 months in prison, as recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
The Palm Beach resident, whose sentencing has been postponed about a dozen times at her request, in turn asked Swain to sentence her to probation with no prison time.
Although Swain gave Harris a lighter sentence than prosecutors wanted, she called Harris’ behavior “despicable,” according to the AP.
The judge noted that Harris initially tried to sell Ashley Biden’s items to then-President Donald Trump’s campaign.
“I don’t think I’m above the law,” Harris said, the AP reported. “I am a survivor of many years of domestic violence and sexual trauma.”
Harris pleaded guilty in August 2022 to conspiring with 60-year-old Robert Kurlander to steal Ashley’s possessions in September 2020 from a home in Delray, Florida, where Ashley had previously lived, and transporting them across state lines for sale .
Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which prosecuted Harris, declined to comment. Harris’ attorney, Anthony Cecutti, declined to comment to CNBC but had told the judge in court that his client “bears the shame and stigma for her actions,” the AP reported.
Harris, who was temporarily staying at the Delray residence after Ashley vacated it, discovered the diary, which contained “very personal entries” and a digital memory card that the president’s daughter had left behind, according to court documents.
The provocative right-wing group Project Veritas later paid Harris and Jupiter, Fla.-based Kurlander $20,000 each for the items, according to court documents.
Kurlander, who pleaded guilty at the same time as Harris, is currently scheduled to be sentenced by Swain on October 25.
Harris’ sentencing comes more than three months after a federal judge ruled that prosecutors could use search warrants seized by the FBI to take documents found in November 2021 at the homes of then-Project Veritas CEO James O’Keefe and two other members of the group were carried out in connection with a criminal investigation into the theft of diaries.
Judge Analisa Torres ruled that prosecutors could seize documents related to arrest warrants that are not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Torres’ late December order notes that prosecutors allege Harris and Kurlander were paid by Project Veritas to travel to New York to give the group Ashley Biden’s diary.
“There, Harris allegedly revealed that the victim had additional items at the Florida residence, and ‘at the request of Project Veritas,’ she and Kurlander returned to Florida to retrieve them,” Torres wrote, citing prosecutors’ allegations.
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“The government alleges they stole additional items from the victim and gave them to a Project Veritas employee in Florida, who transported the items to New York.”
In her order, Torres supported the determination of a so-called special counsel assigned to review the documents that Project Veritas and O’Keefe were not entitled to journalistic privileges to shield the documents from the eyes of prosecutors.
An attorney for O’Keefe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Neither O’Keefe nor anyone else associated with Project Veritas has been charged in connection with the diary.
O’Keefe said in a statement issued after the FBI raids that his organization had been approached by people who offered it the Biden diary, but that the group decided not to publish the contents and later the diary turned over to law enforcement when Ashley’s attorney refused to accept it.
“Ultimately, we made the ethical decision that, in part, we were unable to determine whether the diary was real, whether the diary actually belonged to Ashley Biden, or whether the contents of the diary were not going to publish the diary or any part of it,” O said ‘Keefe back then.
O’Keefe was removed as head of Project Veritas in February 2023.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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2024-04-09 19:56:31
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