Biden, Ashley (1981- )

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    Biden’s State Dinner for Japan Was Heavy on Symbolism (and Yes, Cherry Blossoms)

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    The event’s musical guest, Paul Simon, even learned a little Japanese for the occasion.It was all very polite.Ambassadors, billionaires, a smattering of Biden family members and even one former president were all in attendance at the fifth state dinner President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, have held since taking office.The gauzy celebration leaned heavily into Japanese fans, cherry blossoms and other tokens of the softer side of the U.S.-Japan relationship. The substance of the state visit of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was focused on finding ways to counter China, but the style of the dinner was all about highlighting a capital city that owes its springtime resplendence, in large part, to the diplomatic overtures of the Japanese.President Biden and Prime Minister Kishida raising a toast during the dinner.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesAs the dinner got underway in the East Room, Mr. Biden toasted “to our alliance, to our friendship.” He kept things similarly light earlier in the evening when he greeted Mr. Kishida at the White House, replying, “Thank you,” to a question from a reporter about expectations that Iran would retaliate against Israel for its strike on an Iranian target in Syria.Mr. Kishida also leaned into the idea of friendship.“The Pacific Ocean does not separate Japan and the United States. Rather, it unites us,” Mr. Kishida said during his dinner toast, noting that President Kennedy once said the same thing 60 years ago. “I like this line. I use it so many times that my staff tried to delete it.”Naomi Biden Neal, the president’s oldest granddaughter, and Peter Neal. The couple were married at the White House in 2022.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aimee Harris Faces Sentencing in Theft of Ashley Biden’s Diary

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      Prosecutors said the woman, Aimee Harris, sold the diary to Project Veritas, a right-wing group, to enrich herself and hurt President Biden. Project Veritas, which appears on the verge of collapse after ousting its founder, has denied wrongdoing.A Florida woman who stole a diary and other items belonging to President Biden’s daughter before the 2020 election hoped not only to profit but also to damage Mr. Biden’s chances of winning the White House by selling the material to the conservative group Project Veritas, according to a court filing.In a blistering sentencing memo filed in Manhattan on Wednesday, federal prosecutors said that the woman, Aimee Harris, was unrepentant and had no respect for the law, describing her conduct as “far outside of lawful political activism of any kind.”Ms. Harris, along with Robert Kurlander, has admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ashley Biden had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas is based.“Stealing personal belongings of a candidate’s family member, and selling them to an organization to exploit them for political gain, was wrong and illegal no matter the political agenda,” the memo said.Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of six months’ home confinement and three years of supervised release while having Ms. Harris forfeit the $20,000 that Project Veritas paid her for the diary and other materials. Mr. Kurlander, who also received $20,000 from Project Veritas, is scheduled to be sentenced next month. Each faces up to five years in prison.The filing comes as Project Veritas appears on the verge of collapse after the departure of James O’Keefe, the right-wing provocateur who founded the group. Mr. O’Keefe was ousted after employees complained about his treatment of them and questioned his use of Project Veritas’ funds, leading the group to hire a law firm to investigate the allegations. Project Veritas is suing Mr. O’Keefe, who declined to be interviewed by the law firm.James O’Keefe was ousted by Project Veritas, which he founded, after employees complained about his treatment of them and questioned his use of the group’s funds. Evelyn Hockstein/ReutersMr. O’Keefe’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he had not seen the audit and criticized Project Veritas for failing to pay his client’s legal fees and those of other employees ensnared in the federal investigation that had been prompted by their work for the group.In an earlier tax filing, Project Veritas admitted to paying Mr. O’Keefe $20,512 in “excess benefits” in 2021, saying that charity funds had been spent to assist Mr. O’Keefe when he starred as Curly the singing cowboy in the musical “Oklahoma.”After Mr. O’Keefe’s departure, the group hired Hannah Giles as chief executive. She pledged in June to keep pursuing investigations. But on Wednesday, Jennifer Kiyak, the group’s human resources administrator, said another wave of layoffs was necessary to preserve “the possible future existence of Project Veritas.” She added that the group would pause its operations.The group is known for using deceptive tactics to carry out sting operations against left-wing organizations. It has also targeted reporters of The New York Times and has an ongoing defamation suit against the newspaper.The group is also bracing to see whether federal prosecutors in Manhattan charge anybody else associated with the theft and sale of the diary and other items. As part of the inquiry, federal investigators carried out search warrants at the apartments of Mr. O’Keefe and two former Project Veritas operatives, Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran.Project Veritas, which ultimately did not publish the contents of the diary, denies any wrongdoing.In their latest filing, prosecutors said that Ms. Biden had been living at a friend’s house in Delray Beach, Fla., but moved out in June 2020, leaving the diary and other personal items behind, including tax records, a digital camera, a digital storage card containing private family photographs, a cellphone, books, clothing and luggage.The owner of the house, a friend of Ms. Biden’s, said she could store the items there, prosecutors added, making clear that she did not abandon those personal belongings as Project Veritas has claimed.Ms. Harris moved in shortly after Ms. Biden left, staying in the same room as the president’s daughter. After finding the items, Ms. Harris conspired with Mr. Kurlander to sell them, prosecutors say, taking them to a fund-raiser for President Trump in Florida on Sept. 6, 2020.Before the event, Mr. Kurlander reminded Ms. Harris to bring the stolen property, telling her she had a “chance to make so much money.” Ms. Harris responded that she had additional items that she had not yet disclosed, adding: “I can’t wait to show you what Mama has to bring to Papa.”Robert Kurlander, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to conspiring with Ms. Harris to sell the diary, will be sentenced next month.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesBut the campaign made clear it was not interested in the items and told Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to go to the F.B.I. Eventually, the pair got in touch with Project Veritas, which paid for them to fly to New York days later and stay at a luxury hotel in Manhattan. Later, a Project Veritas operative, identified in the filing as “Employee 1,” instructed Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander to return to the Florida house to retrieve additional items.But Mr. Kurlander demanded more money, according to prosecutors. In an exchange with the operative on an encrypted app, he stated: “We are doing everything we say we will do. It’s just not fair. We are taking huge risks. This isn’t fair.”That operative then flew to Florida to meet the pair, taking more stolen items, according to prosecutors, and shipping them back to New York. The Times has previously reported that Mr. Meads, a confidant of Mr. O’Keefe’s, was sent to Florida to meet the pair.In their sentencing memo, prosecutors castigated Ms. Harris. “Such criminal conduct,” they said, “does not merely hurt the victim, but seeks to undermine the political process.” More

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      Jill Biden Takes the 2024 Campaign to Paris in Another Overseas Appeal

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      As the United States officially rejoined UNESCO, the first lady delivered what sounded like a campaign message, saying the president had rebuilt bonds that frayed under his predecessor.At first glance, Jill Biden’s work on her trips overseas appears to be rooted in the traditional duties of first ladies: She has cheered on American Olympians in Tokyo, made a secret trip to Ukraine to meet with the country’s first lady and attended the royal wedding of the crown prince of Jordan.But in a host of speeches delivered overseas, including in Namibia and France, she has also used her platform for more political purposes, including making her case that President Biden has promoted democracy and revitalized global relationships strained by former President Donald J. Trump.In Paris on Tuesday, the first lady’s presence was a reminder, as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, that Americans may again be choosing between the two men. Dr. Biden was there to deliver remarks for the official return of the United States to UNESCO, several years after the Trump administration pulled the country — and its funding — from the group.She was also there to deliver a White House message that Mr. Biden had united allies against what she called “Putin’s unjust war” in Ukraine.“When my husband, President Biden, took office two and a half years ago, he made a promise to the American people,” Dr. Biden said, “that he would rebuild the systems that were broken and fortify our institutions, that he would work to bring divided communities back together, that he would put us on a path to a better, brighter future while restoring our leadership on the world stage. And he did.”She told a crowd of hundreds outdoors at the UNESCO headquarters in central Paris that her husband “understands that if we hope to create a better world, the United States can’t go it alone, but we must help lead the way.” The dark-gray sky above her looked ominous, and as she spoke, rain began to fall.During his time in office, Mr. Biden has cast the future as a stark battle between democratic and autocratic forces. But in practice, he has been more nuanced.Like Mr. Trump, he has embraced a working diplomatic relationship with Saudi Arabia despite his complaints about the country’s approach to human rights, and he has imposed tough restrictions on asylum seekers who cross the border the United States shares with Mexico.Still, his administration has worked to reposition the United States as a more collaborative partner than it was under Mr. Trump, who pulled out of several international accords and at one point threatened to pull the United States from NATO. For her part, Dr. Biden’s role has been to promote her husband, if not the details of his policies.Dr. Biden met with Ukrainian refugees at a school in Bucharest, Romania, last year. She has used her platform to underscore President Biden’s foreign policy message.Pool photo by Cristian Nistor“She brings a polish and a warmth and a compassion to the job unrivaled by any first lady I know of, particularly as it relates to Europe,” Mark Gitenstein, a longtime Biden ally and the ambassador to the European Union, said in an interview. Mr. Gitenstein, who has known the first lady since the 1970s, said Dr. Biden has evolved from a reluctant public figure to a first lady eager to validate her husband’s credentials.Mr. Biden has low approval ratings domestically, but recent polling has found support for his approach internationally: Views of the president and of U.S. leadership have remained stable or improved since Mr. Biden was elected, according to a survey of 23 countries published in June by the Pew Research Center.The Biden administration has rejoined several global organizations and pacts that Mr. Trump pulled out of, including the World Health Organization, the Paris climate agreement, the United Nations Human Rights Council and UNESCO. Audrey Azoulay, the director general of UNESCO, told Dr. Biden in a meeting on Tuesday that “it’s important to see the U.S. back at the table.”UNESCO, or the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is best known for designating World Heritage sites, more than 1,150 of them since 1972. They include Yosemite National Park in California, Angkor in Cambodia and the Stone Town of Zanzibar. The organization also keeps an “intangible cultural heritage” list of humanity’s most worthy creations — like the French baguette.The United States had also withdrawn from the agency in 1984, during the Cold War, because the Reagan administration deemed it too susceptible to Moscow’s influence and overly critical of Israel. President George W. Bush pledged in 2002 to rejoin the organization partly to show his willingness for international cooperation in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Citing bias against Israel, the Trump administration again pulled out in 2017.During her trip to Paris, Dr. Biden and her daughter, Ashley Biden, toured the Élysée Palace as the guests of Brigitte Macron, the French first lady. Mrs. Macron is expected to join Dr. Biden on a tour of northern France on Wednesday, according to Dr. Biden’s staff. The first lady is scheduled to visit Mont-Saint-Michel, a UNESCO World Heritage site and a Gothic-style Benedictine abbey on an island off the coast. Dr. Biden is also scheduled to visit the Brittany American Cemetery to honor soldiers who were killed during World War II.This year Dr. Biden has also traveled to Mexico, Kenya, Namibia, Canada, Japan, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. Sometimes, she is alongside her husband for diplomatic summits, as she was in Mexico, Canada and Japan. But more often than not, she has been the person he chooses to represent him: In May, she traveled to Britain to attend the coronation of King Charles III.Greeting students in Namibia in February, one of Dr. Biden’s many international trips this year.Dirk Heinrich/Associated PressIn Paris, she spoke, as she often does, of her long career as an educator, and of the importance of lifting up women and girls, though Dr. Biden’s policy portfolio does not include ambitious plans for education access or elevating gender issues.“Pursuing legislation or pushing a legacy-defining initiative is not the kind of activist role of first lady she wants to play,” said Michael LaRosa, her former press secretary. “In many ways, she’s much more comfortable as a permanent campaign spouse because the objective of every speech, event or trip, whether it’s political or official, is in service of her husband’s agenda and lifting up his achievements.”Some of her trips have been at the behest of foreign leaders.At the Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, England, in 2021, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan and his wife approached her as she was climbing out of a motorcade and appealed to her to attend the Olympic Games during the pandemic, according to Mr. LaRosa.Dr. Biden attended the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 after an invitation from the Japanese prime minister.Doug Mills/The New York TimesMasked, she cheered on the athletes from the bleachers.When she is on a plane, she and her aides work on speeches, look over her news coverage and talk over glasses of wine. Dr. Biden also takes cat naps, according to Vanessa Valdivia, her press secretary.Aurelien Breeden More

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

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      Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander admitted to participating in a conspiracy in which Ashley Biden’s diary ended up in the hands of the conservative group Project Veritas near the end of the 2020 campaign.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.Aimee Harris admitted she took part in a conspiracy to transport stolen materials from Florida, where Ms. Biden had been living, to New York.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesIn 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. More

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      La historia detrás del diario de Ashley Biden

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      Proyecto Veritas llamó a la hija del presidente para corroborar que era su diario. Las investigaciones judiciales revelan nuevos datos que muestran cómo fue que esa organización trabajó para divulgar información personal sobre la familia Biden.Un mes antes de las elecciones estadounidenses de 2020, la hija de Joe Biden, Ashley, recibió una llamada de un hombre que dijo que la quería ayudar. Con un tono amistoso, le aseguró que había encontrado un diario que creía que le pertenecía a ella, y quería devolvérselo.Es cierto que Ashley Biden había escrito un diario durante el año anterior mientras se recuperaba de una adicción y lo había guardado, junto con otras pertenencias, en la casa de un amigo en Florida donde había vivido hasta unos pocos meses antes. Si el contenido de ese diario personal se hubiese divulgado, podría haber significado una vergüenza o una distracción para su padre durante un momento crítico de la campaña.Biden acordó con el hombre que llamó que, al día siguiente, enviaría a una persona para que buscara el diario.Pero no estaba tratando con un buen samaritano.Esa persona trabajaba para el Proyecto Veritas, un grupo conservador que se había convertido en uno de los predilectos del presidente Donald Trump, según entrevistas con personas familiarizadas con la secuencia de eventos. Desde la sede del grupo en el condado de Westchester, Nueva York, y acompañado por otros miembros de la organización, el hombre buscaba engañar a Biden para que confirmara la autenticidad del diario, el cual Proyecto Veritas estaba a punto de comprarle a dos intermediarios por 40.000 dólares.El hombre que llamó no se identificó como alguien vinculado al Proyecto Veritas, según relatos de dos personas que conocen los detalles de la conversación. Al final de la llamada, varios integrantes del grupo que estuvieron presentes, que escucharon grabaciones de la llamada o que fueron informados sobre la conversación, creían que Biden había dicho más que suficiente para confirmar que era su diario.Los nuevos detalles sobre el esfuerzo del Proyecto Veritas para confirmar que el diario era de Biden, son elementos de una historia que sigue en proceso y que se enfoca en cómo algunos partidarios de Trump, y una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, trabajaron para exponer información personal sobre la familia Biden durante la campaña electoral de 2020.A través de entrevistas, y documentos judiciales y de otros tipos, la nueva información le agrega más detalles a lo que se sabe sobre un episodio que ha causado una investigación penal sobre el Proyecto Veritas por parte de fiscales federales, quienes sugirieron tener evidencia de que el grupo fue cómplice en el robo de la propiedad de Ashley Biden y el transporte de bienes hurtados a través de fronteras estatales.Además, al demostrar que el Proyecto Veritas utilizó el engaño en vez de técnicas periodísticas tradicionales cuando contactó a Biden —la persona que hizo la llamada se identificó con un nombre falso—, los nuevos testimonios podrían complicar aún más las afirmaciones que hizo la organización en documentos judiciales de que debería ser tratada como una editorial y recibir las protecciones consagradas en la Primera Enmienda. Con regularidad, el Proyecto Veritas lleva a cabo operaciones encubiertas, emboscadas para entrevistas y operativos de vigilancia, principalmente contra organizaciones y periodistas liberales.Al mismo tiempo, la nueva información sobre el caso sugiere que el esfuerzo por divulgar el diario provino de niveles más profundos del círculo de Trump de lo que se suponía.Un mes antes de que llamaran a Ashley Biden, el diario había sido compartido en un evento de recaudación de fondos de Trump en Florida, en la casa de una donante que ayudó a conseguir el diario y se lo entregó al Proyecto Veritas, y que luego fue nominada por Trump para el Consejo Nacional Consultivo de Cáncer. Entre los asistentes al evento se encontraba Donald Trump Jr., aunque no se sabe si leyó el diario.Los fiscales federales han estado investigando el modo en el que el Proyecto Veritas obtuvo el diario, y en otoño del año pasado realizaron allanamientos en las casas de tres de los agentes del grupo, incluida la de su fundador, James O’Keefe. En diversos documentos judiciales, los fiscales han sugerido que la organización fue cómplice en el robo de algunas pertenencias de Ashley Biden porque los testimonios muestran que el grupo obtuvo esos objetos al tiempo que intentaba confirmar la autenticidad del diario.El Proyecto Veritas —que demandó a The New York Times por difamación en otro caso— ha negado cualquier irregularidad o conocimiento de que alguna pertenencia haya sido robada. Se ha presentado como una organización de medios que está siendo injustamente investigada solo por ejercer periodismo, y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por la manera en que han manejado el caso.Los fiscales han señalado que ven las circunstancias de otra manera; en un documento judicial en un tribunal casi desestimaron por completo los argumentos de la defensa del grupo que sostiene que actuaron como una organización de noticias. “La Primera Enmienda no brinda protección contra el robo y el transporte interestatal de propiedad robada”, afirmaron.En respuesta a una solicitud de comentarios al Proyecto Veritas, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico criticando a The New York Times. “Imagínense escribir de forma tan divergente de la realidad y con un uso tan falaz de insinuaciones, que literalmente no exista ninguna expresión que no empeore la situación”, declaró.Los portavoces del FBI y de los fiscales federales que supervisan el caso en el distrito sur de Nueva York se negaron a hacer comentarios, al igual que Roberta Kaplan, abogada de Ashley Biden.Project Veritas se presenta como una organización de medios que está siendo investigada injustamente y ha atacado al Departamento de Justicia y al FBI por su manejo del caso.Stefani Reynolds para The New York TimesEl Times informó con anterioridad que la historia de la participación del Proyecto Veritas en el caso del diario comenzó en los meses previos al día de las elecciones.En julio de 2020, una madre soltera con dos hijos se mudó a la casa en alquiler de un exnovio en Delray Beach, Florida. La mujer, Aimee Harris, simpatizante de Donald Trump, le dijo al exnovio que tenía poco dinero, que no tenía dónde vivir y que estaba en disputa por la custodia de sus hijos. Poco después de mudarse a la casa en alquiler, Harris se enteró de que Ashley Biden —quien era amiga de su exnovio— había vivido en la casa durante ese año.Biden ya había regresado a Filadelfia en junio de 2020, por los días en que su padre había ganado la candidatura presidencial del Partido Demócrata. Guardó un par de bolsos con sus pertenencias en la casa de alquiler junto con su diario, y le dijo a su amigo, quien estaba rentando la casa, que planeaba regresar para llevarse sus cosas en el otoño.En agosto, Harris contactó a Robert Kurlander, un amigo suyo que en la década de 1990 fue sentenciado a 40 meses de prisión por fraude federal y que había expresado en línea su postura contra Biden, para decirle que había encontrado el diario. Ambos creían que podían venderlo, lo que ayudaría a Harris para pagar los abogados que la representaban en la disputa por la custodia.Nuevos detalles tomados de entrevistas y documentos han aclarado lo que sucedió después. Kurlander se puso en contacto con Elizabeth Fago, la donante de Trump que luego organizó el evento de recaudación de fondos al que asistió Donald Trump Jr. Cuando le hablaron por primera vez del diario, Fago afirmó haber pensado que podría ayudar a incrementar las posibilidades de que Donald Trump ganara las elecciones, según dos personas familiarizadas con el asunto.Richard G. Lubin, abogado de Fago, se negó a hacer comentarios.El 3 de septiembre, la hija de Fago alertó al Proyecto Veritas sobre la existencia del diario.Tres días después, Harris y Kurlander asistieron al evento de recaudación de fondos, donde también estaba presente Donald Trump Jr., en la casa de Fago en Jupiter, Florida, para ver si el equipo de la campaña de reelección del presidente podría estar interesado en el diario. Mientras estaba allí, Kurlander les mostró el diario a otras personas. No se sabe con claridad quiénes lo vieron.Después de que la investigación criminal sobre el Proyecto Veritas se hizo pública durante el otoño pasado, un destacado abogado republicano que cabildea en nombre de la organización y O’Keefe informó a un grupo de republicanos del Congreso sobre el caso, con el fin de instarlos a tratar de persuadir al Departamento de Justicia para que dejaran la investigación debido a que el grupo no había hecho nada malo, según una persona informada sobre el asunto.El presidente Donald Trump durante un discurso en Júpiter, Florida, en septiembre de 2020. Días antes, dos personas que luego le vendieron el diario a Project Veritas, lo llevaron a un evento de recaudación de fondos para la campaña de Trump.Doug Mills/The New York TimesEl abogado, Mark Paoletta, dijo que al enterarse de la existencia del diario en el evento de recaudación de fondos, Donald Trump Jr. no mostró ningún interés y dijo que quienquiera que lo tuviera debería informar al FBI. Pero poco después, Paoletta, quien se había desempeñado como el principal abogado del vicepresidente Mike Pence en la Casa Blanca, volvió a llamar a los republicanos del Congreso para decir que no estaba seguro de si la versión sobre la reacción de Donald Trump Jr. era precisa.Los archivos de cabildeo muestran que Paoletta recibió 50.000 dólares durante los últimos dos meses del año pasado para informar a los miembros del Congreso sobre la redada del FBI en la casa de O’Keefe. Paoletta y un abogado de Donald Trump Jr. no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios.Cuando el Proyecto Veritas se enteró de la existencia del diario a principios de septiembre, el grupo buscó adquirirlo. Aproximadamente una semana después del evento de recaudación de fondos, Harris y Kurlander volaron a Nueva York con el diario. Se reunieron con varios agentes del Proyecto Veritas en un hotel de Manhattan.Las dos partes comenzaron a negociar un acuerdo, pero no se llegó a un trato final. Como respuesta a la pregunta sobre qué pudo haberle pedido el Proyecto Veritas para ayudar a autenticar el diario, Kurlander, a través de su abogado Jonathan Kaplan, se negó a hacer comentarios.Pero Proyecto Veritas tuvo que dilucidar varios temas difíciles: ¿en realidad era el diario de Ashley Biden y no se trataba de una falsificación o una trampa? ¿Cómo es que Proyecto Veritas, una organización conocida por sus operaciones encubiertas, podría asegurarse de que no era víctima de sus propias tácticas engañosas?Uno de los subalternos de O’Keefe, Spencer Meads, fue enviado a Florida para investigar la autenticidad del diario.Lo que sucedió después aún no ha sido aclarado, y es uno de los grandes problemas de la investigación. El Proyecto Veritas ha dicho en documentos judiciales que sus agentes obtuvieron artículos adicionales pertenecientes a Biden que sus “fuentes” habían descrito como “abandonados”, sugiriendo así que no tenía conocimiento de ningún robo y que consiguieron las pertenencias de Biden de la misma manera en que los periodistas reciben información.“Poco después, las fuentes acordaron reunirse con el periodista de Project Veritas en Florida para darle artículos abandonados adicionales”, escribieron los abogados del grupo en un expediente judicial federal.Desde hace tiempo, los abogados de Proyecto Veritas habían advertido a los miembros que alentar o incentivar a las fuentes a robar documentos o artículos podría implicar al grupo en un delito. En un memorando dirigido a O’Keefe en 2017, uno de los abogados concluyó: “Bajo este precedente, PV disfruta de protecciones legales sustanciales para informar y divulgar material que puede haberse obtenido ilegalmente, siempre que no haya participado en el proceso para conseguirlo”.Sin embargo, al menos una de las “fuentes” les contó a otras personas que un agente del Proyecto Veritas le había preguntado si podía recuperar más artículos de la casa que pudieran ayudar a demostrar que el diario pertenecía a Ashley Biden, según una persona con conocimiento de la conversación. Una de las fuentes les informó a otras personas que procedió a sacar artículos adicionales de la casa y dárselos al integrante del grupo.En respuesta a las afirmaciones de la organización de que no había hecho nada malo y que su papel en el caso estaba protegido por la Primera Enmienda, los fiscales acusaron al grupo en los documentos judiciales de hacer declaraciones no juradas que son “falsas o engañosas y se contradicen directamente con la evidencia”. También declararon que incluso una organización de noticias legítima no sería protegida por la Primera Enmienda al adquirir materiales mediante robos u otros delitos.“En pocas palabras, incluso los miembros de los medios de comunicación ‘no pueden irrumpir con impunidad y entrar en una oficina o vivienda para recolectar noticias’”, dijeron los fiscales.Sin citar evidencia específica, los fiscales desafiaron directamente un argumento de Proyecto Veritas: la “reiterada afirmación del grupo de que no habían ‘participado’ en cómo se ‘adquirieron’ las pertenencias de la víctima”.El plan de Ashley Biden de que un amigo fuera a recuperar el diario, que tenía la persona que la llamó en octubre, fracasó. Y las versiones que Proyecto Veritas presentó en las últimas semanas, tanto en documentos judiciales como ante la policía local en Florida, sobre cómo obtuvo el diario dejan varias preguntas sobre el desarrollo de los eventos.El FBI obtuvo una orden y allanó la casa de James O’Keefe, el fundador del Proyecto Veritas.Cooper Neill para The New York TimesProyecto Veritas le dijo a un juez federal que el 12 de octubre, O’Keefe envió un correo electrónico diciéndole a su equipo que había tomado la decisión de no publicar la historia sobre el diario, aunque no tenían “ninguna duda de que el documento es real”. Sin embargo, sostenía que las reacciones a su publicación serían “calificadas como un golpe bajo”. La fecha del correo, proporcionada por O’Keefe, fue poco después de la llamada a Biden.Pero cuatro días después de que O’Keefe le dijera a su personal que no publicaría el diario, un importante abogado del Proyecto Veritas le dijo a la campaña de Joe Biden que tenía el diario y que quería entrevistarlo en cámara al respecto, según el Times reportó en diciembre.Menos de una semana después, Proyecto Veritas cerró un acuerdo por 40.000 dólares con Kurlander y Harris para comprar los derechos de publicación del diario, les transfirió el dinero y sugirió que el grupo planeaba publicarlo pronto, según una persona con conocimiento del caso.Al final, Proyecto Veritas decidió no publicarlo. En cambio, un sitio web de derecha publicó el diario en octubre, pero recibió muy poca atención antes de las elecciones. O’Keefe estaba furioso, y algunas personas dentro del Proyecto Veritas pensaron que uno de sus propios integrantes, frustrado por la falta de voluntad del grupo para publicar el diario, lo había filtrado.Proyecto Veritas decidió que uno de sus integrantes regresaría el diario, y las demás pertenencias de Biden, a Florida.Según un informe del Departamento de Policía de Delray Beach, un abogado se presentó en el departamento y le entregó los artículos a un oficial. El abogado, según las imágenes de la cámara corporal de la policía, dijo que los artículos fueron “posiblemente robados”.La policía alertó al FBI, que hizo que un agente recuperara el diario de Biden y otras pertenencias. Casi un año después, el FBI contactó a Harris y a Kurlander.Unas dos semanas después, agentes del FBI consiguieron órdenes para allanar las casas de O’Keefe y dos de sus colaboradores: Meads y Eric Cochran, quienes abandonaron la organización después del incidente del diario. En el caso de Meads, su abogado dijo que el FBI derribó la puerta de su apartamento. Los documentos judiciales indican que el FBI incautó 47 dispositivos, incluida una decena de teléfonos de Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      Project Veritas Says Justice Dept. Secretly Seized Its Emails

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      In a court filing, the conservative group assailed prosecutors for concealing the action in a proceeding from the investigation of how it acquired Ashley Biden’s diary.The conservative group Project Veritas said on Tuesday that the Justice Department began secretly seizing a trove of its internal communications in late 2020, just weeks after learning that the group had obtained a copy of President Biden’s daughter’s diary.In a court filing, a lawyer for Project Veritas assailed the Justice Department’s actions, which involved subpoenas, search warrants and court production orders that had not been previously disclosed and gag orders imposed on Microsoft, whose servers housed the group’s emails.The disclosure underscored the scope and intensity of the legal battle surrounding the Justice Department’s investigation into how Project Veritas, in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, came into possession of a diary kept by Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, and other possessions she had stored at a house in Florida.And it highlighted how the Justice Department has resisted demands by the conservative group — which regularly engages in sting operations and ambush interviews against news organizations and liberal groups and has targeted perceived political opponents — to be treated as a news organization entitled to First Amendment protections.It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to obtain the internal communications of journalists, as federal prosecutors are supposed to follow special guidelines to ensure they do not infringe on First Amendment rights.Since the investigation was disclosed last fall, federal prosecutors have repeatedly said that because they have evidence that the group may have committed a crime in obtaining Ms. Biden’s belongings, Project Veritas is not entitled to First Amendment protections.But Project Veritas, in its filing on Tuesday, said that prosecutors had failed to be forthcoming with a federal judge about the nature of their inquiry by choosing not to disclose the secret subpoenas and warrants.“This is a fundamental, intolerable abridgment of the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” James O’Keefe, the group’s founder and leader, said in a video.In its court filing, Project Veritas asked a federal judge to intervene to stop the Justice Department from using the materials it had obtained from Microsoft in the investigation. The group said that federal prosecutors had obtained “voluminous materials” — which in many cases included the contents of emails — from Microsoft for eight of its employees, including Mr. O’Keefe.The group also disclosed that Uber had told two of its operatives who are under investigation — Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran — that it had handed over information from their accounts in March of last year in response to demands from the government.Microsoft said in response to questions about the matter that it had initially challenged the government’s demands for Project Veritas’s information, but the company declined to describe what that entailed.“We’ve believed for a long time that secrecy should be the exception and used only when truly necessary,” said Frank X. Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft. “We always push back when the government is seeking the data of an enterprise customer under a secrecy order and always tell the customer as soon as we’re legally able.”According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, Microsoft had pushed back on the Justice Department’s subpoenas and warrants when the company was served with them in late 2020 and early 2021. But the government refused to drop its demands and Microsoft handed over the information that prosecutors were seeking, the person said.Because of gag orders that had been imposed, Microsoft was barred from telling Project Veritas about the requests, the person said.Shortly after the existence of the investigation was revealed publicly last fall, Microsoft asked the Justice Department whether it could tell Project Veritas about the requests, the person said. The department refused to lift the gag orders, the person said.In response, Microsoft drafted a lawsuit against the Justice Department to try to get the gag orders lifted and told department officials that the company was prepared to file it. Soon afterward, the department went to court and had the gag orders lifted.A little more than a week ago, Microsoft told Project Veritas about the warrants and subpoenas, the person said.Project Veritas paid $40,000 for Ms. Biden’s diary to a man and a woman from Florida who said that it had been obtained from a home where Ms. Biden had been staying until a few months earlier. Project Veritas also had possession of other items left at the house by Ms. Biden, and at the heart of the investigation is whether the group played a role in the removal of those items from the home.Project Veritas has denied any wrongdoing and maintained that Ms. Biden’s belongings had been abandoned. The group never published the diary.Search warrants used in raids last fall on the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two other Project Veritas operatives showed that the Justice Department was investigating conspiracy to transport stolen property and possession of stolen goods, among other crimes.In response to the searches, a federal judge, at the urging of Project Veritas, appointed a special master to oversee what evidence federal prosecutors could keep from the dozens of cellphones and electronic devices the authorities had obtained.Project Veritas said in its filing on Tuesday that at the time the special master was appointed the government should have revealed that it had conducted other searches that could have infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights or could have been protected by attorney-client privilege.In the final year of the Trump administration, prosecutors in Washington, who were investigating a leak of classified information, secretly obtained court orders demanding that Google, which houses The New York Times’s email accounts, hand over information from four Times reporters’ accounts. In response to requests from Google, the Justice Department allowed it to alert The Times to the demands so the newspaper could fight the orders. A lawyer for The Times, David McCraw, secretly fought the demands, which the government ultimately dropped. More

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      Ashley Biden’s Diary Was Shown at Trump Fund-Raiser. Weeks Later, Project Veritas Called Her.

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      The right-wing group’s deceptive call to the president’s daughter a month before Election Day is among the new details that show how the organization worked to expose personal information about the Biden family.A month before the 2020 election, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s daughter, Ashley, received a call from a man offering help. Striking a friendly tone, the man said that he had found a diary that he believed belonged to Ms. Biden and that he wanted to return it to her.Ms. Biden had in fact kept a diary the previous year as she recovered from addiction and had stored it and some other belongings at a friend’s home in Florida where she had been living until a few months earlier. The diary’s highly personal contents, if publicly disclosed, could prove an embarrassment or a distraction to her father at a critical moment in the campaign.She agreed with the caller to send someone to retrieve the diary the next day.But Ms. Biden was not dealing with a good Samaritan.The man on the other end of the phone worked for Project Veritas, a conservative group that had become a favorite of President Donald J. Trump, according to interviews with people familiar with the sequence of events. From a conference room at the group’s headquarters in Westchester County, N.Y., surrounded by other top members of the group, the caller was seeking to trick Ms. Biden into confirming the authenticity of the diary, which Project Veritas was about to purchase from two intermediaries for $40,000.The caller did not identify himself as being affiliated with Project Veritas, according to accounts from two people with knowledge of the conversation. By the end of the call, several of the group’s operatives who had either listened in, heard recordings of the call or been told of it believed that Ms. Biden had said more than enough to confirm that it was hers.The new details of Project Veritas’s effort to establish that the diary was Ms. Biden’s are elements of a still-emerging story about how Trump supporters and a group known for its undercover sting operations worked to expose personal information about the Biden family at a crucial stage of the 2020 campaign.Drawn from interviews, court filings and other documents, the new information adds further texture to what is known about an episode that has led to a criminal investigation of Project Veritas by federal prosecutors who have suggested they have evidence that the group was complicit in stealing Ms. Biden’s property and in transporting stolen goods across state lines.And by showing that Project Veritas employed deception rather than traditional journalistic techniques in the way it approached Ms. Biden — the caller identified himself with a fake name — the new accounts could further complicate the organization’s assertions in court filings that it should be treated as a publisher and granted First Amendment protections. Project Veritas regularly carries out undercover stings, surveillance operations and ambush interviews, mostly against liberal groups and journalists.At the same time, new information about the case suggests that the effort to make the diary public reached deeper into Mr. Trump’s circle than previously known.A month before the call to Ms. Biden, the diary had been passed around a Trump fund-raiser in Florida at the home of a donor who helped steer the diary to Project Veritas and was later nominated by Mr. Trump to the National Cancer Advisory Board. Among those attending the event was Donald Trump Jr., though it is not clear if he examined it.Federal prosecutors have been investigating how Project Veritas obtained the diary, and last fall carried out searches at the homes of three of the group’s operatives, including that of its founder, James O’Keefe. In court filings, prosecutors have suggested that the organization was complicit in the theft of some of Ms. Biden’s other belongings, which interviews show the group obtained as it was seeking to confirm the diary’s authenticity.Project Veritas — which is suing The New York Times for defamation in an unrelated case — has denied any wrongdoing or knowledge that the belongings had been stolen. It has portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated for simply doing journalism and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Prosecutors have signaled that they view the circumstances very differently, all but dismissing in one court filing the group’s defense that it was acting as a news organization, saying that “there is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property.”In response to a request to Project Veritas for comment, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email criticizing The Times. “Imagine writing so thoroughly divergent from reality and so mendacious with innuendo that there is literally no utterance that won’t make it worse,” he said.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and for federal prosecutors overseeing the case in the Southern District of New York declined to comment, as did Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Biden.Project Veritas portrayed itself as a media organization that is being unfairly investigated, and has assailed the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for their handling of the case.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesThe Times has previously reported that the story of Project Veritas’s involvement with the diary began in the months leading up to Election Day.In July 2020, a single mother of two moved into the rented home of a former boyfriend in Delray Beach, Fla. The woman, Aimee Harris, a Trump supporter, told the former boyfriend that she had little money, had nowhere to live and was in a bitter custody dispute. Shortly after moving into the rental, Ms. Harris learned that Ms. Biden — also a friend of the former boyfriend — had been staying at the home earlier that year during the pandemic.Ms. Biden had moved back to the Philadelphia area in June 2020, around the time her father clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. She stored a couple of bags of her belongings at the rental house along with her diary, and she told her friend, who was leasing the home, that she planned to return to retrieve her things in the fall.In August, Ms. Harris reached out to Robert Kurlander, a friend who had been sentenced to 40 months in prison in the 1990s on a federal fraud charge and had expressed anti-Biden sentiments online, to say she had found the diary. The two believed they could sell it, allowing Ms. Harris to help pay for the lawyers representing her in the custody dispute.New details from interviews and documents have further fleshed out what happened next. Mr. Kurlander contacted Elizabeth Fago, the Trump donor who would host the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. When first told of the diary, Ms. Fago said she thought it would help Mr. Trump’s chances of winning the election, according to two people familiar with the matter.Richard G. Lubin, a lawyer for Ms. Fago, declined to comment.On Sept. 3, Ms. Fago’s daughter alerted Project Veritas about the diary through its tip line.Three days later, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander — with the diary in hand — attended the fund-raiser attended by Donald Trump Jr. at Ms. Fago’s house in Jupiter, Fla., to see whether the president’s re-election campaign might be interested in it. While there, Mr. Kurlander showed others the diary. It is unclear who saw it.After the criminal investigation into Project Veritas became public last fall, a prominent Republican lawyer who was lobbying on behalf of the organization and Mr. O’Keefe briefed a group of congressional Republicans on the case, to urge them to try to persuade the Justice Department to back off the investigation because the group did nothing wrong, according to a person briefed on the matter.President Donald J. Trump delivering remarks in Jupiter, Fla., in September 2020. Days earlier, two people who later sold the diary to Project Veritas brought the diary to a Trump campaign fund-raiser nearby.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe lawyer, Mark Paoletta, said that upon learning about the diary at the fund-raiser, Donald Trump Jr. showed no interest in it and said that whoever was in possession of it should report it to the F.B.I. But shortly thereafter Mr. Paoletta, who had served as Vice President Mike Pence’s top lawyer in the White House, called back the congressional Republicans to say he was unsure whether the account about Donald Trump Jr.’s reaction was accurate.Lobbying filings show that Mr. Paoletta was paid $50,000 during the last two months of last year to inform members of Congress about the F.B.I. raid on Mr. O’Keefe. Mr. Paoletta and a lawyer for Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to messages seeking comment.Once Project Veritas learned about the diary in early September, the group sought to acquire it. About a week after the fund-raiser, Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander flew to New York with the diary. The pair met with several Project Veritas operatives at a hotel on Manhattan’s West Side.The two sides began negotiating an agreement, but no final deal was struck at that stage and Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander returned to Florida. In response to questions about what Project Veritas may have asked him to do to help authenticate the diary, Mr. Kurlander, through his lawyer, Jonathan Kaplan, declined to comment.But Project Veritas had to confront tricky questions: Was the diary really Ashley Biden’s, and not a fake or a setup? How could Project Veritas, best known for its undercover sting operations, be sure it was not a victim of its own deceptive tactics?To authenticate the diary, one of Mr. O’Keefe’s top lieutenants, Spencer Meads, was dispatched to Florida to do more investigative work.What happened next is a matter of dispute and one of the major issues in the investigation. Project Veritas has said in court filings that its operatives obtained additional items belonging to Ms. Biden that their “sources” had described as “abandoned,” suggesting that it had no knowledge of any theft and that it had gotten access to Ms. Biden’s belongings in the same way that journalists receive information.“The sources arranged to meet the Project Veritas journalist in Florida soon thereafter to give the journalist additional abandoned items,” lawyers for the group wrote in a federal court filing.Project Veritas’s lawyers had long instructed its operatives that encouraging or incentivizing sources to steal documents or items could ensnare the group in a crime. In a memo to Mr. O’Keefe in 2017, one of the group’s lawyers concluded: “Under controlling precedent, PV enjoys substantial legal protections to report and disclose material that may have been illegally obtained provided it played no part in obtaining it.”But at least one of the “sources” told others that a Project Veritas operative had asked them whether they could retrieve more items from the home that could help show that the diary belonged to Ms. Biden, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange. Additional items were then taken out of the home and given to the operative, one of the sources has told others.In response to assertions from Project Veritas that it had done nothing wrong and that its role in the case was protected by the First Amendment, prosecutors accused the group in court filings of making unsworn statements that are either “false or misleading and are directly contradicted by the evidence.” They also stated that even a legitimate news organization would have no First Amendment defense for acquiring material through theft or another crime.“Put simply, even members of the news media ‘may not with impunity break and enter an office or dwelling to gather news,’” prosecutors said.Without citing specific evidence, prosecutors directly challenged one argument from Project Veritas in particular: the group’s “repeated claim that they had ‘no involvement’ in how the victim’s property was ‘acquired.’”The plan for Ms. Biden to have a friend retrieve the diary from the person who called her in early October fell through. And the accounts that Project Veritas has laid out in court papers and to the local police in Florida about how it obtained the diary and dealt with it in the final weeks leave open questions about how the events played out.The F.B.I. obtained a search warrant and raided the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesProject Veritas told a federal judge that on Oct. 12, Mr. O’Keefe sent an email telling his team that he had made the decision not to publish a story about the diary, adding, “We have no doubt the document is real” but that reactions to its publication would be “characterized as a cheap shot.” The date provided by Mr. O’Keefe for the email was shortly after the call to Ms. Biden.But four days after Mr. O’Keefe told his staff that it would not publish the diary, a top lawyer for Project Veritas told Mr. Biden’s campaign that it had the diary and wanted to interview Mr. Biden on camera about it, The Times reported in December.Less than a week after that, Project Veritas finalized a deal with Mr. Kurlander and Ms. Harris to buy the rights to publish the diary for $40,000, wired them the money and signaled that the group planned to soon publish it, according a person with knowledge of the case.In the end, Project Veritas chose not to publish. Instead, an obscure right-wing website published the diary in late October, but it got little attention before the election. Mr. O’Keefe was furious, and some within Project Veritas thought that one of its own operatives, frustrated with the group’s unwillingness to publish the diary, had leaked it.Project Veritas decided to have one of its operatives take the diary and Ms. Biden’s other belongings back to Florida.According to a Delray Beach Police Department report, a lawyer showed up at the department and gave the items to an officer. The lawyer, according to police body camera footage, said the items were “possibly stolen.”The police alerted the F.B.I., which had an agent retrieve Ms. Biden’s diary and other belongings. Almost a year later, the F.B.I. approached Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander.About two weeks later, F.B.I. agents obtained search warrants to raid the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two of his operatives: Mr. Meads and Eric Cochran, both of whom left the organization after the diary project. In the case of Mr. Meads, his lawyer said the F.B.I. broke down his apartment door. Court documents indicate that the F.B.I. seized 47 devices, including a dozen phones from Mr. Meads.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      How Ashley Biden’s Diary Made Its Way to Project Veritas

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      New details shed light on the federal investigation into the conservative group’s acquisition last year of a journal kept by the president’s daughter.In the final two months of the 2020 campaign, President Donald J. Trump, his grip on power slipping because of his handling of the pandemic, desperately tried to change the narrative by attacking the business dealings of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter, invoking his name publicly over 100 times.At the same time, another effort was underway in secret to try to expose the contents of a diary kept the previous year by Mr. Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, as she underwent treatment for addiction.Now, more than a year later, the Justice Department is deep into an investigation of how the diary found its way into the hands of supporters of Mr. Trump at the height of the campaign.Federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents are investigating whether there was a criminal conspiracy among a handful of individuals to steal and publish the diary. Those being scrutinized include current and former operatives for the conservative group Project Veritas; a donor Mr. Trump appointed to a political position in the final days of his administration; a man who once pleaded guilty in a money laundering scheme; and a financially struggling mother of two, according to people familiar with federal grand jury subpoenas and a search warrant who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.Extensive interviews with people involved in or briefed on the investigation and a review of court filings, police records and other material help flesh out elements of a tale that is testing the line between investigative journalism and political dirty tricks.The investigation has focused new attention on how Mr. Trump or his allies sought to use the troubles of Mr. Biden’s two surviving children to undercut him.The inquiry has also intensified the scrutiny of Project Veritas. Its founder, James O’Keefe, was pulled from his apartment in his underwear and handcuffed during a dawn raid last month by the F.B.I., two days after a pair of his former employees had their homes raided.The group — which purchased the diary but ultimately did not publish it and denies any wrongdoing — has assailed the investigation. And it has been making a case in court and to Congress that, despite its use of undercover stings and other deceptive tactics, it is practicing a form of journalism that deserves the same legal and constitutional protections afforded news organizations.Asked a list of specific questions related to the investigation, a lawyer for Project Veritas, Paul A. Calli, responded with a statement from Mr. O’Keefe criticizing The New York Times.Roberta Kaplan, a lawyer for Ms. Biden, declined to comment.The episode has its roots in the spring of 2020, as Ms. Biden’s father was closing in on the Democratic presidential nomination. Ms. Biden, who has kept a low profile throughout her father’s vice presidency and presidency, had left a job the year before working for a criminal justice group in Delaware.She was living in Delray Beach, Fla., a small city between Miami and West Palm Beach, with a friend who had rented a two-bedroom house lined with palm trees with a large swimming pool and wraparound driveway, according to people familiar with the events. Ms. Biden, who had little public role in her father’s campaign, had earlier been in rehab in Florida in 2019, and the friend’s house provided a haven where she could avoid the media and the glare of the campaign.But in June, with the campaign ramping up, she headed to the Philadelphia area, planning to return to the Delray home in the fall before the lease expired in November. She decided to leave some of her belongings behind, including a duffel bag and another bag, people familiar with the events said.Weeks after Ms. Biden headed to the Northeast, the friend who had been hosting Ms. Biden in the house allowed an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in. Ms. Harris was in a contentious custody dispute and was struggling financially, according to Palm Beach County court records. At one point in February 2020, she had faced eviction while living at a rental property in nearby Jupiter.Shortly after moving into the Delray home, Ms. Harris — whose social media postings and conversations with friends suggested that she was a fan of Mr. Trump — learned that Ms. Biden had stayed there previously and that some of her things were still there, according to two people familiar with the matter.September 2020: Project Veritas Obtains the DiaryExactly what happened next remains the subject of the federal investigation. But by September, the diary had been acquired from Ms. Harris and a friend by Project Veritas, whose operations against liberal groups and traditional news organizations had helped make it a favorite of Mr. Trump.In a court filing, Project Veritas told a federal judge that around Sept. 3, 2020, someone the group described as “a tipster” called Project Veritas and left a voice message. The caller said “a new occupant moved into a place where Ashley Biden had previously been staying and found Ms. Biden’s diary and other personal items.”The “diary is pretty crazy,” the tipster said on the voice mail, according to a Project Veritas court filing. “I think it’s worth taking a look at.”In a statement after the investigation became public, Mr. O’Keefe said: “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.” The lawyer who took Ms. Biden’s belongings to the police in Florida described them as “crap” and that he was “fine” with officers throwing the bags away.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesIn a recent letter to Congress, a lawyer for Project Veritas said it had been told the items had been abandoned in a room where Ms. Biden had stayed.Project Veritas has acknowledged buying the diary, through an unnamed proxy, from two people it identified in court filing as “A.H.” and “R.K.,” but said it was told they had acquired the diary lawfully.People involved in the case have identified “A.H.” as Ms. Harris and “R.K.” as Robert Kurlander. Mr. Kurlander, a self-described venture capitalist, is a longtime friend and former housemate of Ms. Harris. In October 2020, days before the election, Mr. Kurlander said on Twitter: “Where are Biden’s two kids?” adding, “Ashley and Hunter are disasters. Reflection of the parents.”In 1994, Mr. Kurlander pleaded guilty in federal court in Florida to a conspiracy count in a drug-related money laundering scheme that also led to a guilty plea from David Witter, the grandson of the founder of the investment firm Dean Witter. Mr. Kurlander was sentenced to 40 months in prison.Ms. Harris “is fully cooperating with the investigation and will remain responsive to the government’s requests for evidence and for her version of events,” her lawyer, Guy Fronstin, said in an email. “When the facts emerge it will be clear that my client has information relative to the investigation but no culpability.”Outside his house last month near a golf course in Jupiter, Fla., Mr. Kurlander declined to comment, but a woman with him acknowledged they had been dealing with the matter and wanted to avoid public attention. She provided the name of their lawyer, who declined to comment.A Possible Link to Trump SupportersMr. Kurlander also provides a potential link to the possible role of a number of Trump supporters. Among those whose conduct is being scrutinized in the investigation is a woman with ties to Mr. Trump, Elizabeth Fago, a Florida businesswoman and Trump donor who was nominated by Mr. Trump in December 2020 to the National Cancer Advisory Board.Ms. Fago appears to know Mr. Kurlander. A picture on social media shows them dining together in July 2020. Investigators are also looking at the role of Ms. Fago’s daughter, Stephanie Walczak.Ms. Fago visited the Trump White House at least twice. Her son, Joey Fago — a real estate agent who this year worked with Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberley Guilfoyle on their purchase of a $9.7 million Florida mansion — posted a video of him and his mother at the White House on election night in 2020 and at a Christmas party the next month, where they can be seen in the West Wing.Elizabeth Fago in 2018. Ms. Fago, a donor to former President Donald J. Trump who visited the White House at least twice, is among a number of individuals being scrutinized by federal investigators, according to people familiar with the matter. Nick Mele/Patrick McMullan via Getty ImagesShe and her son also met Mr. Trump on the tarmac of the West Palm Beach airport in 2019 and another picture shows the two together. In 2016, she co-hosted a fund-raiser for Mr. Trump at his club at Mar-a-Lago.That year Ms. Fago gave $15,400 to pro-Trump fund-raising committees and an additional $7,600 to the Republican National Committee after Mr. Trump won the party’s nomination. In October 2020, she gave $500 to pro-Trump committees.It remains unclear how Ms. Harris and Mr. Kurlander made contact with Project Veritas and what role others might have played in facilitating the transaction.Ms. Fago did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Walczak declined to comment.Spokesmen for the F.B.I. and Justice Department declined to comment.Using the Diary as LeverageLess than a month before Election Day, in an Oct. 12, 2020, email that Project Veritas included in a court filing, Mr. O’Keefe told his team that he had made the decision not to publish a story about the diary, adding: “We have no doubt the document is real” but that reactions to its publication would be “characterized as a cheap shot.”But Project Veritas was still trying to use the diary as leverage. On Oct. 16, 2020, Project Veritas wrote to Mr. Biden and his campaign that it had obtained a diary Ms. Biden had “abandoned” and wanted to question Mr. Biden on camera about its contents that referred specifically to him.“Should we not hear from you by Tuesday, October 20, 2020, we will have no choice but to act unilaterally and reserve the right to disclose that you refused our offer to provide answers to the questions raised by your daughter,” Project Veritas’ chief legal officer, Jered T. Ede, wrote.In response, Ms. Biden’s lawyers accused Project Veritas of threatening them as part of “extortionate effort to secure an interview” with Mr. Biden in the campaign’s closing days.Ms. Biden’s lawyers refused to acknowledge whether the diary belonged to Ms. Biden but told Mr. Ede that Project Veritas should treat it as stolen property — the lawyers suggested that “serious crimes” might have been committed — and that any suggestion that the diary was abandoned was “ludicrous.”Ultimately, one of Ms. Biden’s lawyers, Roberta Kaplan, told Mr. Ede: “This is insane; we should send to SDNY.” Shortly thereafter Ms. Biden’s lawyers alerted prosecutors at the United States Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which is now overseeing the case.In the midst of this exchange, a conservative website, National File, published excerpts from the diary on Oct. 24, 2020, and the full diary two days later, though it got little attention. The site 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’s lawyers said in a court filing last month that Project Veritas arranged for Ms. Biden’s items to be delivered in early November to the police in Florida, not far from the house where she had left them. As the investigation came to light last month, Mr. O’Keefe said in a statement that “Project Veritas gave the diary to law enforcement to ensure it could be returned to its rightful owner.”Adam Leo Bantner II, a Florida lawyer, delivered bags belonging to Ashley Biden to the police in Delray Beach the day after her father was declared the victor in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Bantner’s interaction with an officer was recorded on a body camera.Delray Beach Police DepartmentBut a Delray Beach Police Department report and an officer’s body camera video footage tell a somewhat different story. On the morning of Sunday, Nov. 8 — 24 hours after Mr. Biden had been declared the winner of the election — a lawyer named Adam Leo Bantner II arrived at the police station with a blue duffel bag and another bag, according to the police report and the footage. Mr. Bantner declined to reveal the identity of his client to the police.Project Veritas has said in court filings that it was assured by the people who sold Ms. Biden’s items to the group that they were abandoned rather than stolen. But the police report said that Mr. Bantner’s client had told him that the property was “possibly stolen” and “he got it from an unknown person at a hotel.”The video footage, which appears to be a partial account of the encounter, records Mr. Bantner describing the bags as “crap.” The officer can be heard telling Mr. Bantner that he is going to throw the bags in the garbage because the officer did not have any “information” or “proof of evidence”“Like I said, I’m fine with it,” Mr. Bantner replied.But the police did examine the contents of the bag and quickly determined that they belonged to Ms. Biden. The report said the police contacted both the Secret Service and the F.B.I., which later collected the items.Patricia Mazzei More

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      Project Veritas Tells Judge It Was Assured Biden Diary Was Legally Obtained

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      But a search warrant in the case suggests the Justice Department believes the diary kept by the president’s daughter Ashley Biden was stolen.Project Veritas, the conservative group under scrutiny in a Justice Department investigation of how a diary kept by President Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden was published days before the 2020 election, has told a federal judge that it received a diary from two people who said they had legally obtained it after she had abandoned it.“Project Veritas had no involvement with how those two individuals acquired the diary,” lawyers for the group said in a letter dated Wednesday to a federal judge in New York. The group’s lawyers were asking U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres for a so-called special master to determine what materials seized by federal investigators could be used as evidence in their investigation.Using initials for the individuals who the lawyers said approached the group with the diary, the lawyers said the group’s “knowledge about how R.K. and A.H. came to possess the diary came from R.K. and A.H. themselves.”In contrast with Project Veritas’s description in the letter of how the diary was obtained, a warrant used by federal authorities to search the home of the group’s founder, James O’Keefe, last Saturday indicated that federal authorities believed the property was stolen.The proceedings in the case have been sealed, but a producer for Fox News provided The New York Times with a copy of the letter written by the Project Veritas lawyers and its attachments, including a copy of the search warrant. The producer was seeking comment from The Times about allegations in the letter that the Justice Department had leaked news of the searches to the Times.Judge Torres ruled on Thursday that the government should refrain from examining the materials it obtained in the search, including from Mr. O’Keefe’s cellphones, until she decides whether to appoint a special master, according to a ruling from the judge posted on Twitter by a Project Veritas lawyer. The judge set a schedule for the government and Project Veritas to provide her with more information in the coming days, and indicated that she is unlikely to rule for at least a week.The F.B.I. executed search warrants last week at the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two former employees for the group.Project Veritas never ended up publishing Ms. Biden’s diary. It was made public less than two weeks before the 2020 election by a right-wing website that posted several photographs of diary pages it claimed were written by Ms. Biden. The website said it had obtained the diary from a “whistle-blower” who worked for a media organization that had decided not to publish a story on the topic. The search warrant provided some sense of the specific questions the government is seeking to answer in its investigation related to Project Veritas, which has previously said it purchased the diary.According to the search warrant — which described Ms. Biden’s property as “stolen” — the government said it was looking for any evidence Mr. O’Keefe had about how Ms. Biden’s property was obtained and whether Ms. Biden was surveilled before the property was taken.The government also said it was seeking any communications that the group prepared to send to Ms. Biden, Mr. Biden and others about her property.The government said in the search warrant that among the crimes it was investigating were conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines, conspiracy to possess stolen goods and transporting stolen property across state lines.Project Veritas has sought to portray itself as a news media organization that made a journalistic decision not to publish the diary, suggesting it is being targeted by the Biden Justice Department and that federal investigators disclosed the existence of the searches to a reporter for The Times.“This leaked information likely was intended to preemptively deflect criticism that the D.O.J. was being used to target a news organization viewed by some as critical of the Biden administration over the matter of President Biden’s daughter’s diary,” the Project Veritas lawyers said in their letter.They added: “Members of the news media like Mr. O’Keefe and Project Veritas depend on an atmosphere of confidence and trust. If the government may, pursuant to a search warrant, fully examine a reporter’s electronic devices — which include information and communications with government critics, watchdogs and whistle-blowers — then the truth-seeking function of the press will wither.”Susan C. Beachy More