Aimee Harris, left, walks out of Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Larry Neumeister)
The Florida woman who stole and sold a diary belonging to President Joe Biden‘s daughter Ashley Biden was arrested on Monday just a day before she was to begin serving a monthlong sentence in jail for the theft.
According to prosecutors in New York, Aimee Harris is now facing a variety of new charges in Georgia where she was arrested on July 8 in McIntosh County for driving with a suspended license, speeding, possession of an open container, possession of marijuana and obstruction of a law enforcement officer. As a result of the nascent charges, Harris was detained and put under arrest and then transferred to the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Harris, 42, pleaded guilty in 2022 to stealing Ashley Biden’s diary and selling it to Project Veritas amid the 2020 election. Project Veritas, founded by James O’Keefe, is a controversial right-leaning media group known for its purported hidden camera style investigations.
Harris pleaded guilty alongside Robert Kurlander, 60, to conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.
Left: Sept. 22, 2022: James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, announces plans to appeal the verdict against his organization for violating wiretapping laws and misrepresentation (image via YouTube screengrab). Right: Ashley Biden and Joe Biden appear at a Feb. 7, 2017 event in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GILT.)
Prosecutors said that Harris understood the diary belonged to Ashley Biden. Harris said Kurlander had plotted to sell it to Donald Trump‘s 2020 presidential reelection campaign. Instead, she and Kurlander agreed to sell it for $40,000 to Project Veritas and split the profit equally. After Project Veritas purchased the diary, the outlet never made its contents public through their website but the details managed to get out elsewhere.
Harris also took tax documents and personal photos that were found in a storage device at the residence where Ashley Biden briefly stayed in Delray Beach, Florida.
In April, as Politico reported, Harris was sentenced to one month in jail plus three months of home detention. U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, called Harris’ acts “despicable.”
As Law&Crime reported, though prosecutors at first wanted her to serve six months in prison, they later revised their position and said Harris deserved at least four to 10 months in prison.
Harris, they said, had long exhibited a pattern of tactics to improperly delay her fate including by “misleading the Court with false information” to waylay proceedings. That included a reported refusal to engage with her attorney by phone, claims that she was sick and did not have child care and could not show up to court and then failing to provide medical records to back up the claims about her children, who are both under 10 years old.
Prosecutors said they learned that Harris’ ex-husband, who shares custody of the children, had made himself readily available to watch their kids but Harris was uncooperative. Prosecutors said Harris’ former husband told them that he was appalled to learn that one point Harris had kept their children out of school for 10 consecutive days without cause.
According to court records, prior to her most recent arrest in Georgia, Harris had told a pretrial services officer that she was taking a “one day road trip up to SC,” or South Carolina, and that she intended to return within 24 hours.
Kurlander will be sentenced in October.
At Harris’ sentencing hearing in April, her attorney Anthony Cecutti urged a judge to show Harris leniency, Politico reported at the time. Cecutti argued that Harris had been traumatized throughout her life and was a victim of sexual violence. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman said that while this is regrettable, the court must remember who the real victim was in this specific instance.
“Ms. Biden is the victim in this case,” Sobelman said.
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