Florida woman jailed a month for selling Biden’s daughter’s diary
NEW YORK — A Florida mother was sentenced Tuesday to a month in prison and three months of home confinement for stealing and selling U.S. President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary four years ago to the conservative group Project Veritas.
Aimee Harris was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who called the Palm Beach, Florida woman’s actions “despicable.”
Harris pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in August 2022, admitting that she received $20,000 of the $40,000 US that was paid by Project Veritas for personal items belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
Project Veritas, founded in 2010, identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labour organizations and Democratic politicians.
A tearful Harris apologized for enabling Ashley Biden’s private writings to be sold after she found the diary and other items at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida home in 2020, where prosecutors said Ashley Biden believed her items were safely stored after she temporarily stayed there in spring 2020.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said after a prosecutor urged a prison sentence following her failure to appear at numerous sentencing dates on the grounds that she was consumed with caring for her two children, ages 8 and 6.
“I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.
In announcing the sentence, Swain noted that Harris and a co-defendant, Robert Kurlander, of nearby Jupiter, Florida had first tried unsuccessfully to sell Ashley Biden’s belongings to then-president Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.
Kurlander, who has not yet been sentenced, and Harris, had each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines.