Two People Plead Guilty in Conspiracy to Transport Ashley Biden Diary
Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander pled guilty today to a conspiracy to transfer personal items that Ashley Biden had stored in Florida to Project Veritas in New York.
Kurlander entered into a cooperation agreement.
Among other things, Harris stole Ms. Biden’s diary from a period when she was in rehab, one that ended up getting published around the same time the “Hunter Biden” “laptop” story broke. In addition, Harris stole a thumb drive with private pictures of the Biden family, and tax records. At one point during the negotiations with Project Veritas, Kurlander acknowledged what a shitty thing they were doing to Ms. Biden.
I’m expecting that they’re gonna pay up to $100,000 each maybe more . . . I made it so that the 10,000 is NOT your only payment as it was written and if this does turn into something good or blockbusting then I’ll get us more money. They of course come I across as the nicest people in the world but their job is to pay the least and they aren’t your or my best friends. They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info . . . and trying to make a story that will ruin [the Victim’s] life and try and effect the election. [The Victim] can easily be thinking all her stuff is there and not concerned about it. . . we have to tread even more carefully and that stuff needs to be gone through by us and if anything worthwhile it needs to be turned over and MUST be out of that house.
Given that this is a conspiracy and that the Special Master in this case was finalizing her report to share information from (among others) James O’Keefe’s phone in July, the people described as potential co-conspirators in the document — including two Executives of Project Veritas (probably their Office Manager, as well as O’Keefe) and one Employee who had been involved in moving the materials across state lines — may be in a good deal of trouble.
To the credit of Trump’s campaign, they told Kurlander and Harris to bring the materials to the FBI.
“[Candidate-2] campaign can’t use it. They want it to go to the FBI. There is NO WAY [Candidate-2] can use this. It has to be done a different way . . .”
emptywheel coverage of Project Veritas scandal
Parallel Tracks: Project Veritas Served on Their Subpoena Stance
Sting Ray: Project Veritas’ Schrodinger’s Proxy
In Their Bid for Special Master, Project Veritas Provided Evidence of Possible Extortion
Citing “Considerable Detail” in Affidavits, Judge Denies Bid to Unseal Project Veritas Warrants
Tick Tock: SDNY Tells Project Veritas, Again, To Wait Until James O’Keefe Is Indicted to Complain
The only example of respect for process in the history of the Trump campaign. ;-)
They likely thought somebody was wired up.
“To the credit of Trump’s campaign..” There’s something you don’t hear every day.
When your moral and ethical standards are lower than the Trump campaign’s, it’s really time to reconsider your life choices.
It’s worded more like a legal risk assessment than a moral or ethical concern.
Funny coincidence — I just watched the documentary “Class Action Park” about the nototriously unsafe Poconos amusement park Action Park.
Trump appears briefly as a possible investor but he walks away, and the film makers use that as evidence of how crooked the park owner was.
Small correction – Action Park was in Vernon NJ not Poconos.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the same username each time you comment so that community members get to know you. This is your second user name; I hope you’ll stick with this one because it’s more differentiated than the one you last used. Thanks. /~Rayne]
My spouse and her friends called it “Traction Park” when they went there as teenagers. I had no idea that Trump had interest in it as an investor. Maybe he thought he could open a casino after the first one in NJ opened in Atlantic City in 1978. He used to be buds with Hugh Hefner who opened The Great Gorge Playboy Club in Vernon in 1972. Hefner had plans for a casino and a link to the ski area, now called Mountain Creek. No casino was ever built outside AC.
illuminaughti did a pretty good dive into the history of that place in her Prism of the Past series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF6vyRFpywo
But yeah, when you’re too shady for DONALD TRUMP…
The full thought from Dim Jr. was probably something like “It has to be done anther way. Get this to the FBI, where one of Giuliani’s buddies can leak it with more plausible deniability.”
Remember they believe the diary shows something bad about Biden.
TBF they also thought the “Weiner Laptop” showed bad things about Clinton and they used the FBI to leak that out (even thought there were no bad things about Clinton on it).
Remember the Feebs did that leak to the NYT before they asked to look at Abedin’s computer.
This.
It’s not respect for the process – it’s keeping their own hands from getting dirty. Why risk it, if you can simply pass it to the FBI and get them to dig into whatever bad you think is there?
“Let’s get Mikey to do it. Hey, Mikey!”
(Life cereal commercial from the 1970s)
“He won’t eat it, he hates everything!”
He likes it. Hey Mikey (dang I’m old).
I was about to post the same. I’m sure you’ve correctly diagnosed it.
It sounds like it is possible that “on September 10, 2020, (the) representative of Candidate-2’s political campaign”, who declined the offer of the items after thinking about it for four days, may have given Harris and Kurlander an alternative suggestion as to where they could unload the stolen goods since Harris and Kurlander contacted the crooks at Project Veritas that very same day.
The information sheet/charging document says that on the same day that Candidate-2’s campaign declined the items, ” KURLANDER texted HARRIS, “[Candidate-2] campaign can’t use it. They want it to go to the FBI. There is NO WAY [Candidate-2] can use this. It has to be done a different way .”
Maybe that’s why a cooperation agreement is in play- so that the representative of Candidate-2’s campaign’s role is fully explored in case the Candidate-2 representative made two suggestions instead of just one –FBI and/or PV.
“There is NO WAY [Trump] can use this. It has to be done a different way.” is very different from “[we] want it to go to the FBI”. Makes me wonder if the Trump campaign representative gave some tips about how the diary could be used, and then have it sent to the FBI afterwards for plausible deniability.
So to summarise, Project Veritas paid for the defendants to move the stolen goods, paid the defendants for the stolen goods, paid the defendants to return to Florida to steal more, and then collected those additional stolen goods, then transported those goods back to NY, and paid even more for the rest of the stolen goods.
I’m going to hold my breath for when all the media orgs who bashed the FBI for “overreach” or “journalistic protection” or similar BS make a public apology.
Not so much different, but rather instructive. “It has to be done…” sort of implies, we’d like IT to be done, but not this way. And the FBI reference is the “that way”, rather than the “this way”. The IT is really the word that is left dangling out there. At the time this occurred they hadn’t yet pivoted to defunding the FBI; quite the contrary.
“I’m going to hold my breath..”
Didn’t you mean to type “not going”?
You missed “pushed the defendants to steal even more goods”, which is also mentioned in there.
“After the meeting, and at the Organization’s request, HARRIS and KURLANDER returned to Florida to obtain more of the Victim’s property in order to provide it to the Organization. They later met with an Organization employee in Florida and gave that employee more of the Victim’s stolen property, believing that the Organization would transport or cause the transport of the stolen property from Florida to the Organization’s offices in New York, which the Organization subsequently did. The Organization subsequently paid HARRIS and KURLANDER each $20,000 for the stolen property. ”
Note: at the Organization’s request. Doesn’t that make Project Veritas a party to the theft itself?
Was part of the plea deal an obligation to flip on O’Keefe? O’Keefe needs to be in jail and hopefully this plea helps move that event closer.
A bit more from today in a related case about the search warrant for the Project Veritas search: “The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press … writes to notify the Court of a development relevant to the Court’s consideration of its pending objections to the Magistrate Judge’s Opinion and Order dated December 7, 2021. … [T]he Reporters Committee respectfully urges the Court to consider the additional public revelations made in the charging papers and related press release [yesterday] when determining whether the Government has met its burden to establish that the search warrant materials must remain sealed in their entirety.”
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/61377333/91/in-re-search-warrant-dated-november-5-2021/
I’m curious whether O’Keefe will eventually face charges.