The New York Times reports:
A federal judge in Manhattan sentenced a Florida woman on Tuesday to a month in prison for her role in a brazen scheme to steal the diary of President Biden’s daughter and sell it to a right-wing group in the hope of disrupting the 2020 election.
The conduct of the woman, Aimee Harris, “was despicable and consequently very serious,” Judge Laura Taylor Swain of Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York said before handing down a punishment.
Ms. Harris, 41, tested the patience of prosecutors and the judge overseeing the case, missing repeated sentencing dates and jeopardizing what otherwise appeared to be a likely path to probation. In August 2022, she pleaded guilty to conspiring to transport the stolen diary to New York, where she met with employees of the group, Project Veritas, and sold it for $40,000 just weeks before the election.
The Associated Press reports:
A tearful Harris apologized for enabling Ashley Biden’s private writings to be sold after she found the diary and other items at a friend’s Delray Beach, Florida, home in 2020, where prosecutors said Ashley Biden believed her items were safely stored after she temporarily stayed there in spring 2020.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said after a prosecutor urged a prison sentence following her failure to appear at numerous sentencing dates on the grounds that she was consumed with caring for her two children, ages 8 and 6. “I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she told the judge.
Breaking News: A Florida woman was sentenced to a month in prison for her role in a scheme to steal the diary of Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, and sell it to a right-wing group, in what prosecutors called a plot to disrupt the 2020 election. https://t.co/gCDqE5vNQK
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 9, 2024