The quotes in question were found in the so-called "leaked pages" from Ashley Biden's diary, which had been discovered in a former residence and was later sold to the right-wing sting operation Project Veritas, whose founder said the diary's authenticity couldn't be confirmed. While there is strong evidence the diary exists, no source has authenticated its contents or the contents of the pages published online.
On April 5, 2024, a far-right conspiracy-peddling account on X (formerly Twitter) posted an old video with audio of a phone call between Ashley Biden, the daughter of U.S. President Joe Biden, and operatives of Project Veritas — a political organization that claims to practice journalism:
As Snopes discussed in detail in March 2023, that phone call is part of a suite of evidence that suggests Project Veritas came into possession of a diary that authentically belonged to Ashley Biden. Project Veritas, nevertheless, withheld publication of the document.
Instead, a month before the November 2020 U.S. presidential election, a right-wing blog named The National File published what it claimed was "a copy of the complete diary of Ashley Blazer Biden, the 39-year-old daughter of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden, dating from during the 2020 presidential campaign."
An often cited page from that "leaked diary," which chronicled its author's addiction recovery in intimate detail, makes reference to sexual trauma and poses questions in search of an explanation for being "hyper-sexualized @ a young age." Along with mentions of not liking to visit a certain family's house, "being sexualized" with a female friend, and "having sex with friends @ a young age," the author noted taking "showers with my dad (probably not appropriate)."
While there is strong evidence the diary exists, the authenticity of the content of these and other "leaked" pages published online has not been confirmed. Just because a diary exists does not mean that the images presented by National File are that diary.
Legal proceedings that occurred later make it clear that the National File document purportedly came from Project Veritas. The Intercept reported in September 2022 that a Project Veritas employee provided the alleged diary to the National File in October 2020, when Project Veritas had reservations about publishing it.
Project Veritas, court testimony indicates, paid $40,000 for this alleged diary. As reported by The Associated Press in August 2022, the document had come into the possession of two people after one moved into an apartment previously occupied by Ashley Biden:
Ashley Biden was moving out of a friend's Delray Beach home in spring 2020 when she stored the diary, tax records, a digital device with family photos, a cellphone and other items there, prosecutors said in a court filing.
They said [Aimee] Harris then moved into the same room, found the items and got in touch with [Robert] Kurlander, who enthused in a text message that he would help her make a "ton of money" from selling it, adding an expletive before "ton."
Harris and Kurlander pleaded guilty in August 2022 to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines in their sale of the document to Project Veritas. According to Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe in August 2022, his organization could not confirm the diary it received belonged to Ashley Biden.
Because the authenticity of photographs purported to be from a diary is a separate question from the factual existence of a diary, and because the images published by National File have not been confirmed to be from Ashley Biden's actual diary, any claims derived from images purporting to be the diary — including the ones at issue here — must inherently be rated "Unproven."