Two Florida residents pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday to stealing a diary and other belongings of President Biden’s daughter, Ashley, and selling them to the conservative group Project Veritas in the final weeks of the 2020 election.
Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas is headquartered.
Prosecutors said Mr. Kurlander agreed as part of a plea deal to cooperate with the Justice Department’s investigation into how the diary was acquired by Project Veritas, whose deceptive operations against liberal groups and traditional news organizations made it a favorite of former President Donald J. Trump.
“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
The development marks the first time criminal charges have been filed in the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary, which she kept while she recovered from addiction.
“I know what I did was wrong and awful and I apologize,” Mr. Kurlander said in court.
“I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Ms. Harris said.
Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris, who surrendered to the authorities early Thursday morning, were both released from custody after the hearing.
Whether the Justice Department ultimately charges anyone who worked for Project Veritas is unclear, and Project Veritas did not publish the diary.
But prosecutors said the pair at one point disclosed to a Project Veritas operative that Ms. Biden had stored more items at the Florida house, and that at the request of the Project Veritas operative they went back into the house to steal them. The two later met with the Project Veritas operative in Florida and gave the additional stolen property to that employee, who shipped it to New York, prosecutors said.
Since the investigation began in nearly two years ago, federal investigators have moved aggressively, carrying out court-authorized searches at the homes of two former Project Veritas operatives and of the group’s founder, James O’Keefe.
Prosecutors have obtained a trove of emails Project Veritas operatives exchanged around the time that it purchased the diary, and they have interviewed several former Project Veritas operatives, including some who left the organization after growing disillusioned with Mr. O’Keefe.
Project Veritas, which has admitted it purchased the diary, has repeatedly said that its actions are protected by the First Amendment and that it believed the diary had been obtained legally. Although the investigation began during the Trump administration, Project Veritas has attacked the investigation as part of a vendetta being carried out by Mr. Biden’s Justice Department.
The United States Attorney’s office in Manhattan began the investigation in late October 2020 after Ms. Biden’s lawyers alerted them that Project Veritas had demanded an interview with Mr. Biden about the contents of the diary, which included embarrassing disclosures about Ms. Biden and her father.
Ms. Biden had left the diary at a friend’s home in Florida in 2020, and planned to return to retrieve it later that year, according to interviews and court documents. The friend allowed Ms. Harris, who was in a bitter custody dispute and struggling financially, to stay at the home. Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden had been living there and then found her belongings. She told Mr. Kurlander, who informed a Trump supporter and fund-raiser, Elizabeth Fago.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander brought the diary to a Trump fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home, where the diary was passed around, The New York Times reported last year. Ms. Fago ultimately helped direct Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to Project Veritas.
Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander traveled to Manhattan to show Project Veritas the diary, telling operatives for the group that they found the diary and other items at the Delray Beach, Fla., home where Ms. Biden had been staying with a friend.
Project Veritas, which uses deceptive tactics to ensnare targets, undertook a wide ranging effort to authenticate the diary. As part of that effort, a Project Veritas operative tried to trick Ms. Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary was indeed hers.
Project Veritas later contacted Ms. Biden’s lawyers about the diary in an attempt to secure an interview with her father before the election. Ms. Biden’s lawyers told Project Veritas that the idea that she has abandoned the diary was “ludicrous” and accused the group of an “extortionate effort to secure an interview,” according to emails obtained by The Times. Ms. Biden’s lawyers then contacted federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and the full diary two days later, but to little fanfare.
National File said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days. Mr. O’Keefe was said to be furious that the diary ended up in the hands of the National File.
In early November 2020 — just days after the election — Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be taken to the Delray Beach Police Department, where a lawyer was captured on video saying the belongings might have been stolen. Police then contacted the F.B.I.
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