A Florida mom used to be sentenced Tuesday to a month in jail and 3 months of house confinement for stealing and selling President Joe Biden’s daughter’s diary 4 years in the past to the conservative crew Project Veritas.
Aimee Harris used to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court docket by means of Judge Laura Taylor Swain, who known as the Palm Beach, Florida, girl’s movements “despicable.”
Harris pleaded to blame to a conspiracy fee in August 2022, admitting that she won $20,000 of the $40,000 that used to be paid by means of Project Veritas for non-public pieces belonging to the president’s daughter, Ashley Biden.
Project Veritas, based in 2010, identifies itself as a news group. It is best possible recognized for undertaking hidden digital camera stings that experience embarrassed news retailers, hard work organizations and Democratic politicians.
A tearful Harris apologized for enabling Ashley Biden’s non-public writings to be bought after she discovered the diary and different pieces at a pal’s Delray Beach, Florida, house in 2020, the place prosecutors mentioned Ashley Biden believed her pieces had been safely saved after she quickly stayed there in spring 2020.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris mentioned after a prosecutor advised a jail sentence following her failure to seem at a lot of sentencing dates at the grounds that she used to be fed on with worrying for her two kids, ages 8 and six.
“I’m a survivor of long term domestic abuse and sexual trauma,” she informed the pass judgement on.
With a legal professional for Ashley Biden gazing from the court’s spectator segment, Harris apologized to the president’s daughter, announcing she regrets making her youth and existence public.
In pronouncing the sentence, Swain famous that Harris and a co-defendant, Robert Kurlander, of within sight Jupiter, Florida, had first attempted unsuccessfully to promote Ashley Biden’s assets to then-President Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential marketing campaign.
The pass judgement on mentioned that Harris, but even so being motivated by means of greed, had was hoping to affect the country’s political panorama.
Kurlander, who has now not but been sentenced, and Harris, had each and every pleaded to blame to conspiracy to delivery stolen belongings throughout state traces.
Defense legal professional Anthony Cecutti advised no jail time, bringing up his consumer’s irritating existence and her efforts to care for her kids whilst getting better from abuse and violence.
“She carries the shame and stigma of her actions,” he mentioned.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman advised a jail sentence, announcing Harris had exhibited a “pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system.”
“Ms. Harris is not the victim in this case,” Sobelman mentioned. “Ms. Biden is the victim in this case.”
He mentioned Harris in the summer season of 2020 had stolen Ashley Biden’s diary, a virtual garage card, books, clothes, baggage and “everything she could get her hands on” in the hopes she “could make as much money as she could.”
“She wanted to damage Ms. Biden’s father,” he mentioned.
Harris used to be informed to document to jail in July. As she left the courthouse, she declined to discuss.
The legal professional for Ashley Biden additionally declined to remark, regardless that he submitted a letter to the pass judgement on on his consumer’s behalf an afternoon previous that used to be now not straight away put in the court docket file.