Ashley Biden Caught in Diary Investigation After Leak | PEOPLE.com

I went in search of a story about Ashley Biden and her dad. I was told there was an FBI investigation. What I wasn't told was that the FBI investigation is centered on James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.

Unbelievable what some people try to pass off as truth

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

The saga of an intimate journal found in Florida and an FBI raid in New York By Aaron ParsleyUpdated January 08, 2022 05:37 PMFBTweetMorePinterestEmailSend Text MessagePrintAshley Biden and Joe Biden Credit: Gary Gershoff/WireImage

A former diary believed to belong to President Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley Biden, is now at the center of a federal investigation into how its handwritten pages ended up published on an obscure right-wing website last year.

The convoluted case focuses in part on Project Veritas, a self-described "non-profit journalism enterprise" with a history of undercover operations and other secretive tactics that critics have long said are far more manipulative than journalistic. In 2017, The Washington Post reported how the group apparently tried to trick their reporters by peddling a false sexual assault allegation against a conservative politician.

Republicans, meanwhile, have repeatedly trumpeted Project Veritas' work exposing perceived bias and misconduct in mainstream culture. Last year, a PBS lawyer resigned from the network after being secretly recorded comparing former President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. A decade ago, NPR's CEO was forced out after several controversies, including an NPR fundraiser being caught by Project Veritas members criticizing conservatives. And so on.

Attorneys for the group, which at one point had possession of the purported Ashley Biden diary, insist they've done nothing illegal and are being railroaded despite deciding to turn over the material rather than publish it themselves.

James O'Keefe, the provocative founder and head of Project Veritas, contends his work makes him a target even as he has dismissed the backlash to his methods. (In 2010, he pleaded guilty after entering then-Sen. Mary Landrieu's office under false pretenses. He said his group had been attempting to see if the lawmaker's staff was ignoring constituents but admitted, "I should have used other means.")

"We are insurgents who have an existential threat against us by the government, the system, which seeks to shut us down, and a complacent and corrupt media," O'Keefe argued in a 2018 Politico profile where he also sarcastically referred to the claim he "selectively" edits some of the group's videos.

All of this has made President Biden's low-profile daughter — a 40-year-old social worker with no formal role in the administration or her dad's campaigns — into a reluctant figure in the dueling court papers as the diary investigation morphs into a legal battle over First Amendment rights.

How the Case Unfolded

On Nov. 6, federal authorities entered O'Keefe's home in Mamaroneck, New York.

Agents — who searched the New York City and Westchester County homes of two former employees of Project Veritas two days earlier — had been granted a warrant after a federal judge ruled there was probable cause to believe that O'Keefe's "residence contained evidence of federal crimes, including conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines and conspiracy to possess stolen goods," according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

"Stolen property" refers at least in part to the diary thought to belong to Ashley Biden, O'Keefe's attorney has said.

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Investigators were looking for evidence of communication with Ashley, anything that might indicate the value and location of her property, plans to sell her property or to surveill the president's daughter, according to the search warrant, also obtained by PEOPLE.

Authorities further sought evidence of communication with President Biden or his daughter's associates regarding "her stolen property and communications among co-conspirators discussing what to do with her property."

O'Keefe, who has not been charged, called the search intrusive in the extreme.

"I woke up to a pre-dawn raid, banging on my door," he told Sean Hannity in a Fox News interview days after the search. "There were 10 FBI agents with a battering ram, white blinding lights. They turned me around, handcuffed me and threw me against the hallway. I was partially clothed in front of my neighbors. They confiscated my phone. They raided my apartment."

James O'Keefe Credit: Jason Davis/Getty Images

Agents were permitted to "seize any and all cellphones" found at the residence, according to the warrant. The confiscation of those devices is now the subject of the legal battle between Project Veritas and the government over journalistic rights and whether material on the phones is protected by the First Amendment.

In particular O'Keefe's attorney, Paul Calli, has urged investigators not to go through O'Keefe's phone.

"I request that the government sequester and not access Mr. O'Keefe's cell phone, which it seized this morning. Mr. O'Keefe's cell phone contains attorney-client privileged communications and attorney work product related to this investigation," Calli wrote in a letter to prosecutors the day of the raid. "It also contains attorney-client privileged materials and attorney work product for numerous matters unrelated to the government's inquiry."

O'Keefe has claimed to be the center of a sprawling network of member-operatives, telling Politico in 2018 that there were "people with aliases" hiding in "safe houses" who are "literally putting their lives at risk."

Calli requested a special master be appointed to oversee a review of confiscated devices using a filtering process because, he argued, the material is protected by attorney-client privilege. The judge granted that request last month.

It appears the case began after Project Veritas started corresponding directly with the Bidens: The New York Times reported last month that Ashley's attorney reached out to federal prosecutors when Project Veritas sent a message in October 2020 seeking an on-camera interview with the then-presidential candidate about the diary. Ashley's lawyers called the request "extortionate."

(A spokeswoman for the FBI did not respond to PEOPLE's questions about the investigation.)

Since it was founded in 2010, Project Veritas has been accused of deceptively editing videos and of using fake identities and secretly recording its subjects.

Despite a stated mission to "investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions," the group is substantially bankrolled by conservative supporters.

Project Veritas has targeted mainstream media outlets like ABC News and CNN as well as progressive organizations like Planned Parenthood and teachers' unions.

Its invocation of muckracking journalism — and the long history of going undercover to find wrongdoing — is also divisive.

A previous chair of the Society for Professional Journalists' ethics committee, Andrew Seaman, called O'Keefe "an advocate who uses some of the more controversial items in journalism's toolbox," according to a 2016 Post story that explored Project Veritas' investigative tactics.

Prosecutors in the diary investigation have been more blunt, writing last year: "There is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property."

The Leaker and the Diary

Ten days before the 2020 presidential election, a website called National File published pages of a journal it said was procured from "a whistleblower" and belonged to President Biden's daughter. In a subsequent post two days later, the site published what it claimed was "the full 112-page diary" that included entries about the author's time in a Florida drug rehabilitation facility as well as the author's romantic interests, family life and other deeply personal topics.

In the follow-up post, the site elaborated on the motives of the "whistleblower" who allegedly provided the diary, saying the individual was "concerned the media organization that employs him would not publish the materials in the final days before the presidential election."

O'Keefe's organization, it turns out, fits that description. Project Veritas was in possession of the diary but chose not to publish it or any stories about it, the group maintains, due to editorial concerns — despite what they call a vetting process that determined it was authentic.

The White House didn't respond to PEOPLE's request for comment about the investigation or other aspects of this story.

Administration officials and the Bidens have not publicly discussed Ashley's purported diary. The contents described by National File haven't been independently verified.

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"I've thought carefully on whether to release this so-called 'Sting Ray' story which involve entries in a personal diary to a very public figure," O'Keefe began an October 2020 email addressed to "Team" that was submitted as evidence to U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres in the dispute over the scope of the federal investigation.

"To release means the action is less wrong than the necessary wrongs that would follow if the information were not utilized and published. But in this case even more harm would be done to the person in question and Project Veritas if we were to release this piece," O'Keefe continued. "We have no doubt the document is real, but [i]t is impossible to corroborate the allegation further. The subsequent reactions would be characterized as a cheap shot."

'Request for Comment' ... or Attempted Extortion?

After O'Keefe's email was sent on Oct. 12, 2020, a Project Veritas attorney attempted to contact then-candidate Biden to request an interview about his daughter's diary.

Or else.

"We make this offer in good faith, with the hopes to allow you, Mr. Biden, to present your side of the story to the public. 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," Jered T. Ede wrote in his correspondence, according to a video clip O'Keefe produced to respond to reported allegations by Ashley's lawyers that it was an "extortionate act" to secure an interview with her dad.

"It's called a request for comment," O'Keefe says while snacking on dry ramen noodles out of a bag in the video, which O'Keefe's attorney sent to PEOPLE.

Was Ashley's Diary Stolen?

Court papers detail more of the timeline leading up to this fall.

Calli wrote in correspondence with Judge Torres that the diary was presented to his client's organization through "a proxy" by two individuals referred to as "R.K. and A.H."

"Prior to this contact, neither James O'Keefe nor anyone at Project Veritas knew or had even heard of R.K. and A.H.," Calli wrote. "Those two individuals represented that they had material (including a diary) that Ashley Biden had abandoned at a house where she had been staying in Delray Beach, Florida. Project Veritas had no involvement with how those two individuals acquired the diary."

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As President Biden was close to clenching the Democratic nomination for the presidency in the spring of 2020, his daughter was living away from the campaign spotlight with a friend in a two-bedroom house with a pool and palm trees, according to the Times' report last month.

In June, the Times reported, Ashley headed to Pennsylvania but planned to return to the Delray Beach home before the lease ended that November. She left some of her belongings in Florida.

"The diary and other personal effects were abandoned in a room in which Ashley Biden had previously stayed," an attorney for Project Veritas, Mark Paoletta, wrote to members of Congress on Dec. 8.

Joe Biden and Ashley Biden Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/VF16/WireImage

Paoletta, who called the November searches on O'Keefe and others' homes, an "egregious attack" on his client's First Amendment rights, claimed despite the police investigation that the organization's access to the diary was "obtained lawfully."

"All of Project Veritas's knowledge about how R.K. and A.H. came to possess the diary came from R.K. and A.H. themselves," Calli wrote in his own letter to the judge, adding that during negotiations to hand off "the diary and other materials reportedly abandoned by Ms. Biden," the pair "reaffirmed that they had come to possess the diary lawfully."

The Times, though, noted a wrinkle in this version: According to a police report, a lawyer who first turned over the diary and other materials to authorities in Delray Beach in November 2020 said it was "possibly stolen."

Calli wouldn't comment on the record about this and did not respond to emailed questions about that attorney's interaction with police.

In a fiery statement, however, Calli disputed the broader claim that the diary was stolen as stated in the warrant and other court documents. He also questioned the timing of the raid on his client's home.

"After a year, why has there not been one scintilla of support for the claim the diary and other worthless personal effects were 'stolen'?" he told PEOPLE. "Where's the beef!? It stinks to high heaven — and journalists should be lining up to condemn the government's attack on this routine media interaction with a source, which is really an attack on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and a free press."

Who Are R.K. and A.H.?

The Times reports that a woman named Aimee Harris moved into the home where Ashley was staying before she headed to the Northeast and that a man named Robert Kurlander is Harris' "longtime friend and former housemate."

Both are named in the warrant issued Nov. 5 ahead of the raid on O'Keefe's home.

The document indicates that investigators were seeking "evidence of the identity, locations, knowledge, and participation" of "potential co-conspirators" who may have been involved in "obtaining, transporting, transferring, disseminating, or otherwise disposing of Ashley Biden's stolen property."

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"Aimee 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 attorney Guy Fronstin told PEOPLE in a statement. "When the facts emerge, it will be clear that my client has information relative to the investigation but no culpability."

An attorney for Kurlander declined to comment to the Times. Kurlander could not be reached by PEOPLE.

Ashley Biden and Joe Biden Credit: Aurora Rose/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images

Who Gave the Diary to National File?

"Project Veritas had no involvement in the publication of the diary, which was done without its knowledge or consent," Calli says.

He told the judge that Project Veritas attempted to return the diary to its owner through Ashley's attorney. "Ms. Biden's lawyer, however, declined to confirm whether the diary belonged to Ms. Biden," Calli wrote in a letter to the court. "Accordingly, in November 2020, Project Veritas arranged for the delivery of the diary and other materials provided by R.K. and A.H. to local law enforcement in Florida."

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Through a spokeswoman, Ashley's attorney Roberta Kaplan declined to comment to PEOPLE.

Calli did not respond to questions about his claim in court documents that Project Veritas had "no advanced knowledge" of another site's intention to publish the diary despite an op-ed in the Washington Post that suggests otherwise.

Post media critic Erik Wemple wrote that, according to National File's editor in chief, the site's "whistleblower" was from Project Veritas and claimed their vetting of the diary included a taped phone call with Ashley, who admitted the diary was hers in the conversation. (Representatives with National File referred PEOPLE to a previous statement explaining why they posted the diary, maintaining that they believe it was "abandoned.")

"Shortly before National File published the purported diary pages, it called O'Keefe to ask for the recording of that call [with Ashley]," Wemple wrote in his opinion piece headlined "Did the Justice Department overreach in raiding James O'Keefe's home?"

Calli, O'Keefe's lawyer, has plenty to say about such a question — and aboutthe Times, which Project Veritas sued for libel in 2020.

James O'Keefe Credit: Greg Doherty/Getty Images

The paper was temporarily blocked from "publishing or seeking out certain documents related to the conservative group," the Timesreported in November, after running a story based on internal Project Veritas documents about its history of "deceptive reporting" practices and allegations of "political spying." (The Times called the judge's ruling against them a blatant violation of the First Amendment.)

"Shame on The New York Times, shame on the federal prosecutors, shame on the FBI, and shame on other members of the media who would impugn these good journalists," Calli said in his own statement to PEOPLE.

He also defended his client and cited O'Keefe's editorial decision not to publish the diary or a story about it as evidence of what he called Project Veritas' sound journalism.

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"If the false narrative that James O'Keefe is not a journalist but is a 'political spy' were true, he wouldn't have labored about whether to publish a news story about Ashley Biden's diary — he would have immediately published it," Calli said.

Ashley, for her part — like brother Hunter — has always been acutely aware of the spotlight cast by her last name, no matter her proximity to politics.

Two years ago, before her dad was elected to the presidency, Ashley spoke with the Post about a new project of her own.

She said then: "I know there's going to be that scrutiny."

This story has been updated.