MANHATTAN (CN) — A federal judge sentenced a Florida-based Trump supporter to one month in prison on Tuesday afternoon for her role in stealing Ashley Biden’s diary and selling it to the conservative media outlet Project Veritas.
U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered Aimee Harris, of Palm Beach, Florida, to surrender in July to begin her one-month prison sentence in the summer while her two elementary school-age children would be out on vacation.
“Ms. Harris’s conduct was despicable,” the Clinton-appointed chief judge said, noting that Harris deliberately sought out Ashley Biden’s diary and other intimate personal belongings with “full knowledge of the havoc” that their release would cause in the political media landscape.
“She was motivated by greed,” the judge said.
Swain ordered the one-month prison sentence to be followed by three years of supervised release, including three months of home detention, along with participation in an outpatient substance abuse program.
Prosecutors previously consented to a sentence without time behind bars, but after repeated adjournments and no-show appearances by Harris, they adjusted their sentencing request to include a guidelines range sentence of four to ten months in prison.
“She misled the court over and over again,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman said at sentencing.
“The defendant has, at best, a flexible relationship with the truth,” he remarked, reporting that separate from her federal case in New York Harris repeatedly failed to appear in court, has not taken her children to school in three weeks in breach of a court order, and three Florida judges has found she failed to comply with court orders.
At Tuesday’s sentencing — the 12th scheduled date for the hearing — Swain told Harris that any failure to surrender for her prison sentence on time or to comply with the terms of her supervised release would result in more prison time.
“Please do not ever put me in the position of having to make that choice,” the judge warned. “Your freedom is too important to take risks like that.”
Ashley Biden did not attend the sentencing hearing. She was represented by Kaplan Hecker & Fink partner Michael Ferrara, who declined to make a victim statement on her behalf.
Harris and her co-defendant Robert Kurlander were charged together in New York's Southern District in 2022 based on the Westchester County headquarters of Project Veritas, a conservative group known for using hidden cameras and ambush techniques in an attempt to reveal supposed liberal bias.
Harris and Kurlander pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, which carried a maximum prison sentence of five years.
The criminal information against Harris and Kurlander described how they met with “employees of an organization based in Mamaroneck, New York,” to work out the sale of the diary and additional stolen property belonging to the president's daughter.
According to prosecutors, Harris texted Kurlander excitedly about the stash of Biden’s personal items: "Omg. Coming with stuff that neither one of us have seen or spoken about," and added, "I can't wait to show you what Mama has to bring Papa."
Prosecutors say that payment amounted to $20,000 each for Harris and Kurlander. Judge Swain ordered forfeiture in the amount of the $20,000 paid to Harris, which she had previously agreed to pursuant to her plea deal.
Harris and Kurland entered guilty pleas in August 2022, admitting to their participation in a conspiracy to transport stolen items from Florida, where Ashley Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas is based.
Prosecutors said the pair attempted, unsuccessfully, to sell the items to the Trump campaign before making a deal with Project Veritas.
Like Project Veritas, the president's daughter is not named explicitly in charging papers, nor is the type of property stolen. The details of the investigation have been public for months, however, and Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe has long insisted the group did nothing illegal.
Neither Project Veritas nor any staffers have been charged with a crime, and the organization has said its activities were protected by the First Amendment.
O'Keefe said his group turned the journal over to law enforcement and did not publish information from it because it could not confirm that the diary belonged to Ashley Biden.
The Veritas founder and former Breitbart columnist initially described the person who found the diary as a “tipster.”
“We took steps to corroborate the authenticity of the diary. At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof,” O’Keefe said in November 2021.
The FBI raided O'Keefe's Mamaroneck apartment as part of the diary probe, but a spokesperson for the group insisted that the organization’s news-gathering activities were “ethical and legal.”
In February 2023, the board of Project Veritas removed O’Keefe as the right-wing group’s leader over purported “financial malfeasance” and accusations he spent an excessive amount of donor funds.
Harris’s co-defendant Robert Kurlander is currently set to be sentenced before Judge Swain on Oct. 25, 2024.
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