Two people from Florida have admitted to conspiring to ship stolen goods belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter over state lines and sell them to the news outlet Project Veritas. Aimee Harris allegedly stole Ashley Biden’s diary from a Delray Beach, Florida home where she had temporarily left some of her belongings before traveling to New York City with co-defendant Justin Kurlander to meet with Project Veritas representatives, according to criminal information submitted to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Because the Department of Justice typically does not name individuals or organizations that have not been charged with crimes in indictments or criminal information, prosecutors referred to the right-wing organization as “the Organization” in their written statements. “During that meeting, [Harris] described the circumstances of how she had obtained the property, and provided the property to the Organization,” they wrote.
According to the prosecution, Harris, and Kurlander returned to Florida at the request of the media organization Project Veritas, recovered additional items belonging to Ms. Biden, and then gave the stolen items to a Project Veritas worker with the understanding that they would be taken back to the organization’s Mamaroneck, New York headquarters. The group then paid each of them $20,000.
The Justice Department further stated that Harris and Kurlander decided to sell Ms. Biden’s property to Project Veritas after a member of former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, whom the two had met at a fundraiser in September 2020, rejected their offer and suggested that they give it to the FBI. After nearly two years of inquiries by federal authorities into how Ms. Biden’s diary came to be in the custody of Project Veritas, the two entered guilty pleas.
The New York Times reports that during their plea hearing, Kurlander and Harris both expressed regret for their behavior, with Kurlander confessing that he understood what he’d done was “bad” and expressing regret for it. Harris added, “I sincerely apologize for any acts and know that what I did was against the law. Although FBI investigators have carried out search warrants at the residences of two former workers as well as Project Veritas’ creator, James O’Keefe, as part of the protracted investigation, it is unknown whether prosecutors are considering any charges against the organization.
Although the right-wing organization acknowledged buying the diary, it emphasized that it did not publish it and insisted that its acts were protected as journalistic activities under the First Amendment. In the US, journalists are typically free to use information that has been taken from its legitimate source, but the fact that Project Veritas urged Kurlander and Harris to go back to Florida and recover additional items belonging to Ms. Biden could subject the organization or its members to legal action.
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