Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty in a scheme to sell a diary and other items belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for 40,000 US dollars (£33,805), prosecutors have said.
Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams’ office said.
“Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result,” Mr Williams said in a statement.
Harris’ lawyer Sam Talkin said she “has accepted responsibility for her conduct and looks forward to moving on with her life”. Kurlander’s lawyer Florian Miedel declined to comment.
While authorities did not identify Ashley Biden or the organisation that paid, the details of the investigation have been laid out in court filings and public statements from Project Veritas.
Ms Biden was moving out of a friend’s home in Delray Beach, Florida, in spring 2020 when she stored the diary, tax records, a digital device with family photos, a mobile phone and other items there, prosecutors said in a court filing.
They said Harris then moved into the same room, stole the items and got in touch with Kurlander, who contacted Project Veritas, which asked for photos of the material and then paid for the two to bring it to New York.
Project Veritas staffers met with the pair in New York and dispatched them back to Florida to retrieve more of Ms Biden’s items from the home, which they did and turned the material over to a local Project Veritas worker who brought it to New York, prosecutors said.
The activist group, which considers itself a news organisation, paid the two 20,000 dollars (£16,908) apiece, prosecutors said.
Project Veritas has said it received the diary from “tipsters” who said it had been abandoned in a room. The activist group said it turned the journal over to law enforcement and never did anything illegal.
Founder James O’Keefe has said Project Veritas ultimately did not publish information from the diary because it could not confirm it belonged to Ms Biden.
Project Veritas is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labour organisations and Democratic politicians.
