Left: Sept. 22, 2022: James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, announces plans to appeal the verdict against his organization for violating wiretapping laws and misrepresentation (image via YouTube screengrab). Right: Ashley Biden and Joe Biden appear at a Feb. 7, 2017 event in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for GILT.)
At first, prosecutors in New York wanted just six months of home confinement and a few years of supervised release for Aimee Harris, the woman who stole a diary belonging to President Joe Biden‘s daughter Ashley Biden and then sold it to Project Veritas.
But now the situation has changed.
According to a supplementary sentencing submission filed on April 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, prosecutors say Harris should serve four to 10 months in prison instead. Slated for sentencing on April 9, prosecutors say Harris has “repeatedly and consistently engaged in tactics to improperly delay” her sentencing at least 12 times.
Whether it was by providing the court with “misleading the Court with false information” to justify her unmerited requests to adjourn the sentencing date, or whether it was her failure to fully comply with court orders to provide documents to support those requests, prosecutors allege Harris has routinely flouted the administration of justice.
“[The] defendant has shown to be completely unamenable to court supervision such that a sentence involving mere probation will not be sufficient to deter the defendant from continuing to flout the law,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams wrote.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Harris pleaded guilty alongside fellow Floridian Robert Kurlander in August 2022 for stealing Ashley Biden’s diary from a private residence in Delray Beach, Florida, before the 2020 election. Kurlander will be sentenced April 12.
Prosecutors said Harris and Kurlander knew the property belonged to a family member of a then-former government official who was seeking national political office. Nevertheless, the duo plotted to sell the diary to a buyer in New York for $40,000, or $20,000 apiece. That buyer was Project Veritas, a controversial right-leaning media group known for its purported hidden camera style investigations. The FBI executed a search warrant on Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe’s home in 2021 in connection to the theft.
After completing the sale to Project Veritas, the contents of Ashley Biden’s diary were not published through the organization but some of the details still got out. In addition to the diary, they also stole tax documents, personal photos on a storage device and other personal effects like clothing.
The April 2 sentencing submission details at length the numerous times Harris managed to avoid sentencing. After she pleaded guilty in August 2022, she was first scheduled to be sentenced that December. That November, however, she had run a red light and received a ticket for that plus failure to register her vehicle and no proof of car insurance.
After Harris failed to come up with documents per court order in November 2022, she managed to adjourn sentencing until January 2023, saying she was “still in the process” of gathering records to help her lawyers prepare her for sentencing. A second adjournment request was made less than two weeks later and the court, again, agreed to delay for a month. A sealed court record was filed, prosecutors said, and a third request was granted to adjourn sentencing. This went on and on throughout 2023 with multiple adjournments granted in September and some under seal.
By December, a court-appointed attorney told the presiding judge that Harris had “refused to speak with her” since she was appointed and the judge ordered Harris to appear in person for sentencing this January. A day before Harris was due in court, she called in sick, saying she was without child care and could not show. Harris was ordered to provide medical records.
Prosecutors noted in their sentencing submission this week that they had “recently learned” her claim about not having child care was also “false.” The children’s father and her ex-husband, who shares custody, was available to care for them, prosecutors said.
Further, they said, that as of April 2, Harris’ ex-husband informed that Harris has “now kept her children out of school for ten consecutive days without cause.”
Harris did not produce the medical records until Feb. 3, several days after the initial order and two days after she asked the court for release of her U.S. passport to travel from her home in Florida to the court in New York. Harris claimed the passport was being held by pretrial services and she had no other government-issued ID she could use to travel.
“Although the defendant was incorrect that her passport was being held by the Pretrial Services Office (and she has no valid passport), her request — which reported that the defendant had no government-issued identification card — made clear that the defendant possessed no identification documents to travel and never intended to travel to this District for sentencing at any of the prior dates that were scheduled by this Court, including the most recent date of January 30, 2024,” the sentencing memo states.
Harris was ordered to appear for sentencing for the eleventh time last month on March 27. She didn’t show.
Prosecutors say in the last few weeks, Harris blatantly disregarded orders to provide financial documents to probation services and her attorney said a day before the March 27 hearing that she had not been in touch with Harris to coordinate her travel despite her best efforts to reach her.
The “scandalous conduct” of stealing Ashley Biden’s diary was its own affair, and exhibited a “clear disrespect for the law,” prosecutors said. But her “troubling” conduct even after pleading guilty has only made matters worse.
An attorney for Harris did not immediately respond to request for comment Thursday.
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