Aimee Harris, right, walks out of Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, April 9, 2024, in New York.
Larry Neumeister | AP
A Florida woman was arrested Monday in Georgia on motor vehicle, marijuana, and other state charges just one day before her scheduled voluntary surrender to begin a monthlong jail term for stealing and selling the diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden, prosecutors revealed in a New York federal court filing.
On Wednesday morning, after reviewing that filing, a federal judge signed off on a request by prosecutors to have the woman, Aimee Harris of Palm Beach, taken into custody by U.S. marshals in light of her latest arrest.
Within hours of that order, prosecutors told the judge that federal marshals in Georgia had transferred Harris to U.S. Bureau of Prisons custody “since the state facility where the defendant is being held is also utilized as a federal holding facility.”
Harris’ arrest comes nearly two years after she pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to conspiring to steal Ashley Biden’s diary and sell it to the right-wing media group Project Veritas weeks before the 2020 election.
Harris, 42, was sentenced in April to one month in jail and three months of home detention. She had been scheduled to surrender Tuesday at noon to begin serving her jail sentence.
On Tuesday evening, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, in a letter to Chief District Judge Laura Taylor Swain, said it was informed by federal pretrial services that Harris had been arrested Monday in McIntosh County, Georgia.
Harris was “charged with multiple offenses, including driving with a suspended license, speeding, possession of an open container, possession of marijuana, and obstruction of a law enforcement officer,” prosecutors wrote to Swain. “The defendant is currently in state custody in connection with those charges.”
Harris on Sunday had emailed her supervising pretrial services officer that she was going on a “one day road trip up to” South Carolina on Monday and would return Monday night, the letter said.
Harris’ lawyer, Anthony Cecutti, did not immediately respond to a request for comment by CNBC.
Harris in 2020 had temporarily lived at a Delray, Florida, private home after Ashley Biden had stayed there.
There, Harris discovered Ashley Biden’s diary, which contained highly personal material, as well as a digital storage card belonging to the president’s daughter, court filings say.
Harris and her admitted co-conspirator, Robert Kurlander, first tried to sell Biden’s personal items to the 2020 reelection campaign of then-President Donald Trump, who was running against Joe Biden at the time.
Project Veritas later paid Harris and Kurlander $20,000 apiece for the items, according to court filings.
Kurlander, who like Harris pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the theft and sale, is due to be sentenced by Swain on Oct. 25.
