DOJ seeks tougher sentence than initially sought in Ashley Biden diary case

The bizarre saga of the discovery and sale of a journal said by some to reveal damning secrets involving the president's family took yet another strange turn this week.

As The Hill reports, the Justice Department has revised its sentencing recommendation for Aimee Harris, the woman who found and subsequently sold a diary said to belong to first daughter Ashley Biden, escalating its suggested penalty to encompass a period of 10 months in prison.

The DOJ explained that in September 2020, Harris was staying at Ashley Biden's residence in Delray Beach, Florida, when she came across a journal “containing highly personal entries," financial information, and more.

From there, Harris is said to have recruited fellow defendant Robert Kurlander to help her find a buyer for the material she discovered.

Ultimately, a total of $40,000 was paid by investigative journalism outfit Project Veritas to the duo of Harris and Kurlander in exchange for the diary and ancillary materials.

As the Daily Mail noted, both defendants pleaded guilty in August 2022 to conpsiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property.

While federal prosecutors originally only sought six months of home confinement and another three years of supervised release for Harris, a Tuesday letter to the presiding judge requested that a more significant sentence of between 4 and 10 months in prison be imposed.

In their communication, DOJ lawyers expressed frustration that Harris had delayed her sentencing date a total of 12 times, often for what they suggested were spurious reasons that were eventually shown to be untrue.

Federal prosecutors also noted that Harris engaged in repeated tactics designed to wrongfully delay the imposition of her sentence and failed to comply with court orders to disclose certain information.

“At bottom, the defendant's flagrant disrespect for the law, including the orders of this Court – even after pleading guilty in this case – demonstrates an abdication of responsibility for her conduct and strongly militates for an incarceratory sentence,” the letter contended.

Interestingly, Project Veritas never published the diary, despite having paid for it, though another outlet did make the materials public, as Newsweek notes.

Self-described online fact-checking site Snopes has suggested that evidence “strongly” suggests that the diary – which contained some troubling anecdotes about Joe Biden – was indeed Ashley Biden's, no law enforcement or governmental agency has ever definitively confirmed that conclusion.

As such, some conservative commentators on social media have cried foul about the ambiguity and its potential relevance to Harris' sentencing.

One user wrote, “I was told over and over again that the Ashley Biden diary was fake and debunked by the 'experts' Why press charges for a fake diary?” and Laura Loomer asked the thought-provoking question, “So if the Ashley Biden diary is real, doesn't that mean we have a pedophile occupying the White House?”