Ashley Biden speaks alongside her father US President Joe Biden during a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, June 13, 2023.
Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Florida woman who stole and then sold a diary and other items belonging to Ashley Biden — the daughter of President Joe Biden — to a right-wing media group weeks before the 2020 election was sentenced Tuesday to one month in federal jail and three months of home detention.
Aimee Harris, 41, also was ordered to forfeit $20,000 and to serve three years of probation at her sentencing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where a lawyer for Ashley Biden was in the audience.
Before Harris was sentenced, assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Sobelman told Judge Laura Taylor Swain that Harris had shown a “pattern of disrespect for the law and the justice system,” and was motivated to steal Ashley Biden’s property “to make as much money as she could,” and to harm President Biden politically, The Associated Press reported.
“She wanted to damage Ms. Biden’s father,” Sobelman said, the AP reported.
Prosecutors had asked that Harris be sentenced to between four to 10 months in jail, as recommended by federal sentencing guidelines.
The Palm Beach resident, whose sentencing was postponed about a dozen times at her request, in turn asked Swain to sentence her to probation, with no time in jail.
Although Swain gave Harris a lighter sentence than prosecutors wanted, she called Harris’ conduct “despicable,” according to the AP.
The judge pointed out that Harris initially had tried to sell Ashley Biden’s items to the campaign of then-President Donald Trump.
“I do not believe I am above the law,” Harris said, the AP reported. “I’m a survivor of long-term domestic abuse and sexual trauma.”
Harris pleaded guilty in August 2022 to conspiring with 60-year-old Robert Kurlander, in September 2020 to steal Ashley’s possessions from a Delray, Florida, home where Ashley previously lived…
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