In March 2022, Jack Cashill spent a WorldNetDaily column complaining that Project Veritas got busted handling stolen property in the form of Ashley Biden’s diary, piously touting how the right-wing group decided not to publish it because it would be “characterized as a cheap shot.” Joseph Farah spent a June 2022 column complaining that the FBI got involved in its theft, repeating Tucker Carlson’s claim that “Joe Biden was effectively using the feds as his secret police force,” then hyping salacious claims in the diary that he chose to read as Joe Biden molesting his daughter.
If WND had any qualms about salaciously snooping through stolen property, they have disappeared — in an apparent desperate to have a scoop of some kind — because reporter Peter LaBarbera spent three articles snooping through Ashley’s diary. In an Aug. 1 article, LaBarbera touted how Project Veritias abandoned those purported scruples as well and release excerpts from the diary:
Project Veritas, a conservative undercover journalism organization, has released phone-conversation audio from President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, confirming a diary that has drawn worldwide attention – most notably, for its revelations about her famous father “inappropriately” joining her in the shower when she was a girl – is indeed hers.
PV released an eight-minute video about the diary in which audio is played of a conversation between Ashley Biden and a PV journalist confirming the diary and other items left behind at a Florida home were hers.
In the diary – reported copies of which are available on Scribd and whose pages have been published on Twitter – the author (now confirmed to be Ashley Biden) describes how she was “hyper-sexualized [at] a young age. What is this due to? Was I molested? I think so,” she writes. “I remember having sex with friends [at] a young age, showers [with] my dad (probably not appropriate), being turned on when I wasn’t supposed to be.”
A post published Monday by Project Veritas, headlined “NEVER-BEFORE -SEEN: Ashley Biden Confirms Famed Diary Is Hers & the Full Story Behind the FBI Raids on American Journalists,” states: “Today, Project Veritas published the real story behind the Ashley Biden diary and personal items, when and how it came into our possession, and the subsequent unconstitutional FBI raids of three Veritas journalists. Hear, for the first time, the fateful voicemail left on our tip line, as well as the call, in which Ashley herself confirmed the authenticity of the diary, and the rest of the full story.”
LaBarbera didn’t explain why he thought rummaging through Ashley Biden’s diary was any of his business beyond prurient interest and malicious partisan intent.
LaBarbera did more snooping for an Aug. 14 article:
Ashley Biden, the only child of Joe and Jill Biden’s marriage, was a cocaine addict who struggled to overcome her drug habit throughout 2019 in the run-up to her father’s presidential bid, she writes in her diary, now confirmed as authentic.
In the 112-page handwritten diary, Biden describes over and over again how she yearned to get “sober” from cocaine, only to have a relapse and start “using” again. She was being treated at the Caron Oceanside luxury rehab facility in Delray Beach, Florida, which caters to affluent clientele, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings at a local addiction-help center in the same town south of Palm Beach.
[…]This article, the first of two parts, focuses on Ashley Biden’s struggles with cocaine addiction. Part Two will focus on her deeply troubling sexual and family revelations, including her recorded belief that she was likely sexually molested as a child.
Again, LaBarbera failed to explain why he’s sniffing around stolen property, but he seemed to justify it by claiming the diary was “leaked”:
Curiously, when O’Keefe was still running Project Veritas, which he founded, he chose not to publish the contents of the (then-alleged) Ashley Biden diary, saying that PV could not verify its authenticity. The document was later leaked, however, and is currently available online on Scribd and other sites.
Despite the phone call from Ashley Biden herself confirming the diary was hers, the left-biased “fact-checking” website Snopes still classifies the Ashley Biden diary story as “Unproven,” under the headline, “Did Ashley Biden Accuse Joe Biden of Inappropriate Behavior in a ‘Leaked Diary’?”
He did concede the diary was stolen, however:
According to the DOJ, the first daughter’s diary was acquired by two Floridians, Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, who discovered it and other personal items left behind in a house rented by Ashley Biden, possibly following her time at Caron. The couple allegedly sold the diary and other material to Project Veritas for $40,000.
In August 2022, Harris and Kurlander each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison.
LaBarbera served up even more salacious stuff the next day:
In her personal diary – now confirmed as authentic – first daughter Ashley Biden describes memories of “sexual trauma” in her childhood that are “absolutely red flags” in terms of revealing potential child sexual abuse, according to an attorney who spent 10 years as a court-appointed guardian professionally trained to recognize signs of such abuse.
LaBarbera again conceded the diary was stolen:
The diary was found at a Florida rental home in 2020 by two people who reportedly sold it to Project Veritas and were later prosecuted by the DOJ for selling stolen property following an over-the-top FBI raid on the home of James O’Keefe, then president of Project Veritas. The diary was leaked to a conservative website, Alex Jones’ National File, but recently was confirmed as authentic by Ashley Biden herself, in a recorded phone conversation Sept. 3, 2020 with a Project Veritas staffer, and released to the public by the undercover journalism outfit July 31.
In none of these articles did he explain why he’s snooping through stolen property, and what sort of fringe journalistic ethics he’s relying on to justify it.