The Florida woman who stole Ashley Biden’s diary and sold it for $40,000 to a conservative news website before the 2020 election has been given a month in prison.
Aimee Harris, 41, swiped the diary while staying with Joe Biden’s daughter at her Delray Beach, Florida, residence in 2020.
She later asked Robert Kurlander to help her sell the stolen material to try and make the private material public.
The pair later sold it to Project Veritas, a conservative news outlet, for $20,000 each, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
A tearful Harris apologised to the court, while a judge called her actions ‘despicable’ and told her to report to prison by July.
Aimee Harris, the woman who stole Ashley Biden’s diary and sold it for $40,000 to a conservative news website, has been given a month in prison. She is pictured walking out of Manhattan federal court after the sentence was handed down
Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property in August 2022, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
A federal judge sentenced Harris on Tuesday to a month behind bars and three months of home detention.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain of Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York called Harris’ conduct ‘despicable’ and ‘very serious’.
She will then be on supervised release for three years and must also forfeit $20,000 she received from selling the diary.
In a statement to the court, Ms. Biden called the theft a ‘heinous form of bullying’.
Ashley Biden, the only child of Joe Biden’s marriage to First Lady Jill Biden, left the private journal behind at a home in Palm Beach, Florida after she moved to Philadelphia in June 2020
Harris stole the diary while staying with Joe Biden ‘s daughter at her Delray Beach, Florida , residence in 2020. She later asked Robert Kurlander to help her sell the stolen material
Robert Kurlander and Harris admitted that they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials – including the diary – from Florida , where Biden had been living, to New York, where they tried to sell them
‘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 eight and six.
‘I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,’ she told the judge.
Prosecutors had recommended a sentence of between four and 10 months behind bars.
U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman said Harris had shown a ‘pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system.’ She said her motive was ‘to make as much money as she could’ and hurt Joe Biden.
‘She wanted to damage Ms. Biden’s father,’ he said.
The Palm Beach residence sought to get off with only probation.
Lawyer her lawyer Anthony Cecutti said Harris ‘carries the shame and stigma for her actions.’
