From the very beginning of the story the NY Times has seemingly had an inside line with everything investigators have been doing in this case. That continues today as the Times has published a new story with a bunch of detail about how Ashley Biden’s diary may have wound up with Project Veritas. The story involves a house in Delray Beach, Florida where Ashley Biden was living during the 2020 campaign. But as the campaign came to an end, she left the state:

In June, with the campaign ramping up, she headed to the Philadelphia area, planning to return to the Delray home in the fall before the lease expired in November. She decided to leave some of her belongings behind, including a duffel bag and another bag, people familiar with the events said.

Weeks after Ms. Biden headed to the Northeast, the friend who had been hosting Ms. Biden in the house allowed an ex-girlfriend named Aimee Harris and her two children to move in. Ms. Harris was in a contentious custody dispute and was struggling financially, according to Palm Beach County court records. At one point in February 2020, she had faced eviction while living at a rental property in nearby Jupiter.

Shortly after moving into the Delray home, Ms. Harris — whose social media postings and conversations with friends suggested that she was a fan of Mr. Trump — learned that Ms. Biden had stayed there previously and that some of her things were still there, according to two people familiar with the matter…

Project Veritas has acknowledged buying the diary, through an unnamed proxy, from two people it identified in court filing as “A.H.” and “R.K.,” but said it was told they had acquired the diary lawfully.

A.H. is Aimee Harris and R.K. is a friend of hers named Robert Kurlander. Together they sold the diary to Project Veritas.  A lawyer for Harris said she was “fully cooperating” with the investigation but added she has “no culpability.”

It’s not illegal for PV to obtain or buy the diary but it would be illegal to plan to steal it. PV maintains that it was told the diary was not stolen but had been abandoned. The Times story doesn’t offer any evidence to contradict that claim. PV never published the diary or any of its contents and the Times reports that it has seen an email from James O’Keefe saying they had decided not to publish it even though they believe it was real because doing so “characterized as a cheap shot.”

That sounds like a pretty reasonable journalistic decision and O’Keefe was arguably correct to make it because when another site did publish the diary shortly before the election the story got almost no attention from anyone.

Again, unless they have evidence PV knowingly conspired to steal the diary, there’s no crime here. But with the president’s daughter involved, you never know how smoothly the course of justice will run.