Florida Pair Pleads Guilty in Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

Federal prosecutors presented new evidence on Thursday implicating the conservative group Project Veritas in the theft of a diary and items belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, laying out in court papers their fullest account yet of how allies of President Donald J. Trump tried to use the diary to undercut Mr. Biden in the final days of the 2020 campaign.

The court papers were filed in connection with the guilty pleas on Thursday of two Florida residents who admitted in federal court in Manhattan that they had stolen the diary and sold it to Project Veritas.

Prosecutors directly tied Project Veritas to the theft of Ms. Biden’s items in the court papers, saying that an employee for the group had directed the defendants to steal additional items to authenticate the diary and paid them additional money after receiving them.

Citing a text message between the defendants who pleaded guilty — Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander — prosecutors provided new insights into how Project Veritas tried to authenticate the diary and what the group had planned to do with it.

“They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info,” Mr. Kurlander wrote, adding that Project Veritas was “trying to make a story that will ruin” Ms. Biden’s life “and try and effect the election.”

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have been investigating the theft of the diary and Project Veritas’s role in it since they were alerted to the theft just days before the 2020 election, as the group sought to interview Mr. Biden about the contents of the diary.

The investigation has spurred questions about how much the First Amendment can protect a group that claims it is a news media organization even though its methods fall far outside traditional journalistic norms.

And it has put Mr. Biden’s Justice Department in the highly unusual position of investigating a crime in which the president’s daughter was a victim at the same time it is weighing whether to charge his son, Hunter Biden, in a separate case involving potential tax and foreign lobbying violations.

In their pleas, Ms. Harris, 40, and Mr. Kurlander, 58, admitted they took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas has its headquarters.

“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

“They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so,” Mr. Williams 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.”

As part of the investigation, the authorities have executed a search warrant at the homes of two former employees and Project Veritas’s founder, James O’Keefe, and they have obtained a trove of the group’s emails from around the time it purchased the diary.

No charges have been filed against Project Veritas or any of its operatives, and the group never published the diary. But in a sign that the investigation into the group will continue, the authorities said Mr. Kurlander had agreed to cooperate with the authorities.

Ms. Harris’s lawyer, Sanford Talkin, declined after the hearing to discuss whether she would cooperate with the authorities, saying: “She has accepted responsibility for her actions, and she looks forward to moving forward with her life.”

In a brief statement, Project Veritas said its “news gathering was ethical and legal.”

“A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” it said.

It is unclear what impact the disclosure about Project Veritas’s role in the scheme will have on its operations, which are often funded by donors.

The pleas mark the first time criminal charges have been filed in the theft of Ms. Biden’s diary, which she kept while she recovered from addiction and which contained intimate information about her and her family.

“I know what I did was wrong and awful, and I apologize,” Mr. Kurlander said in court.

“I sincerely apologize for any actions and know what I did was illegal,” Ms. Harris said.

Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris, who surrendered to the authorities early Thursday, were released from custody after the hearing. Both are scheduled to be sentenced in December.

Ms. Biden had left the diary at a friend’s home where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Fla., in 2020 and planned to return to retrieve it that year, according to interviews and court documents.

After Ms. Biden left, her friend allowed Ms. Harris, who was in a bitter custody dispute and struggling financially, to stay at the home. Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden had been living there and found her belongings, including the diary, in August.

She told Mr. Kurlander, who texted her that they could make a lot of money from the diary and family photos she had also found among Ms. Biden’s belongings. Mr. Kurlander, The New York Times has reported, then informed a Trump supporter and fund-raiser, Elizabeth Fago.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander took the diary to a Trump fund-raiser at Ms. Fago’s home, where it was passed around, The Times reported last year, an event also documented in the court filing on Thursday. Before the event, the court papers said, Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris: “On Sunday you may have a chance to make so much money.” Prosecutors said by that time she had stolen additional items belonging to Ms. Biden.

“Omg. Coming with stuff that neither one of us have seen or spoken about,” Ms. Harris texted Mr. Kurlander. “I can’t wait to show you what Mama has to bring Papa.”

Prosecutors said the pair had hoped to sell the items to the Trump campaign. But a representative of the campaign who was not identified in the court papers told the pair that they were not interested in buying the property and that they should take it to the F.B.I. Instead, The Times has reported, Ms. Fago ultimately helped direct Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to Project Veritas.

In September, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander traveled to Manhattan to show Project Veritas the diary, telling two operatives for the group that they had found it and other items at the Delray Beach home where Ms. Biden had been staying with a friend. Project Veritas paid for the pair to go to New York and stay at a luxury hotel, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that a Project Veritas operative wanted more of Ms. Biden’s property to try to authenticate the diary and would pay more for those additional items. Mr. Kurlander realized there was an opportunity to make more money from Project Veritas.

Mr. Kurlander texted Ms. Harris, the court filing said, that they had “to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.”

Ultimately, Project Veritas paid them $40,000.

Prosecutors did not name the Project Veritas employees who met with Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander in New York, but last year the F.B.I. searched the home of Spencer Meads, a confidant of Mr. O’Keefe. The Times has previously reported that Mr. Meads was sent to Florida to authenticate the diary.

Prosecutors said that one of the Project Veritas employees traveled to Florida on the same day that Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander stole the additional items. All three of them met, and Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris gave the Project Veritas operative the items. Mr. Kurlander also met with the operative the next day and provided an additional bag, prosecutors said.

Project Veritas, which uses deceptive tactics to ensnare targets, undertook a wide-ranging effort to authenticate the diary. As part of that effort, an operative tried to trick Ms. Biden during a phone call into confirming that the diary was hers.

Project Veritas later contacted Ms. Biden’s lawyers about the diary in an attempt to secure an interview with her father before the election. Ms. Biden’s lawyers told the group that the idea that she had abandoned the diary was “ludicrous” and accused the group of an “extortionate effort to secure an interview,” according to emails obtained by The Times. Ms. Biden’s lawyers then contacted federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and its full contents two days later. The disclosure drew little attention.

National File said it had obtained the diary from someone at another organization that was unwilling to publish it in the campaign’s final days. Mr. O’Keefe was said to be furious that the diary ended up in the hands of National File.

In early November 2020 — days after the election — Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be taken to the Delray Beach Police Department, where a lawyer was captured on video saying the belongings might have been stolen. The police then contacted the F.B.I.