A West Palm Beach woman was sentenced on Tuesday to one month in prison and three months at home for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s journal from a Delray Beach house four years ago to the conservative nonprofit Project Veritas.
Aimee Harris was punished in Manhattan federal court by Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who described her behavior as “despicable.”
Harris pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in August 2022, admitting to receiving $20,000 of the $40,000 paid by Project Veritas for personal belongings belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
Project Veritas, launched in 2010, refers to itself as a news organization. It is well known for carrying out hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news organizations, labor unions, and Democratic candidates.
In tears, Harris apologized for allowing Ashley Biden’s private writings to be sold after discovering the diary and other materials at a friend’s Delray Beach home in 2020, where prosecutors claimed Ashley Biden thought her belongings were safe after staying there temporarily in spring 2020.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said after a prosecutor recommended a prison sentence for her failure to appear at multiple sentencing hearings because she was preoccupied with caring for her two children, aged eight and six.
“I’m a survivor of long-term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.
With a lawyer for Ashley Biden watching from the courtroom’s spectator section, Harris apologized to the president’s daughter, saying she regrets making her childhood and life public.
Swain stated in his announcement of the punishment that Harris and a co-defendant, Robert Kurlander of nearby Jupiter, had previously attempted but failed to sell Ashley Biden’s things to then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.
The judge stated that Harris, in addition to being driven by greed, aspired to have an impact on the nation’s political scene.
Kurlander, who has yet to be sentenced, and Harris both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to carry stolen items across state lines.
Defense counsel Anthony Cecutti argued for no prison sentence, emphasizing his client’s tragic background and efforts to care for her children while healing from abuse and violence.
“She carries the shame and stigma of her actions,” he went on to say.
Assistant US Attorney Robert Sobelman argued for a jail term, citing Harris’ “pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system.”
“Ms. Harris is not the victim in this case,” Sobelman explained. “Ms. Biden is the victim in this case.”
He claimed that in the summer of 2020, Harris stole Ashley Biden’s diary, a digital storage card, books, clothing, baggage, and “everything she could get her hands on” in order to “make as much money as she possibly could.”
“She wanted to damage Ms. Biden’s father,” the senator claimed.
Harris was ordered to go to prison in July. She declined to speak as she exited the courthouse.
Ashley Biden’s lawyer declined to comment, despite the fact that he had sent a letter to the judge on his client’s behalf the day before, which was not immediately entered into the court record.