Two Floridians pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiring to traffic in stolen goods for selling a diary and other personal effects of President Biden’s daughter Ashley, Politico reports. The criminal charges are the first to emerge from a federal investigation into how, the journal reached the conservative video outlet Project Veritas before the 2020 election The group has said it paid for rights to publish the diary, but never did so because it couldn’t authenticate it. Contents from the diary later emerged on a more obscure conservative site.
Last November, the FBI carried out search warrants at the home of the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, and those of two of his colleagues, in connection with the investigation. None of them has been charged, but O’Keefe has denounced the searches as an attack on press freedom. In a Manhattan federal court on Thursday, Aimee Harris, 40, of Palm Beach and Robert Kurlander, 58, of Jupiter each pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge for their involvement in selling the journal. The charging document says that after Harris told Kurlander what she had discovered, he texted her that they could “make a SHIT TON of money” from the journal. The pair tried to offer the diary to the Trump campaign, but the campaign turned them down and suggested they give the materials to the FBI.