Ashley Biden: “At this point, and I don’t mean to—I don’t want to have to get the Secret Service involved in this, right? Because, it’s a whole process, but you know, I am Ashley Biden. It is my stuff, so if you could just give all of that over, it’d be really appreciated.”

I remember that conversation well because I was there in the room where it happened as the communications director and part of O’Keefe’s senior leadership team.

It was Oct. 22, 2020, a Thursday night, and O’Keefe pulled us into his large office so that we could run through it one more time.

There were other calls during that meeting, including those who provided the diary to Project Veritas, Aimee Harris, and Jonathan Kurlander. When they told O’Keefe that the Trump campaign had passed on the diary, it made me wonder if the campaign suspected a forgery.

My role as the in-house expert on journalism was to weigh in on the accuracy and appropriateness of the release, its impact on Project Veritas, and whether it was compelling as news content.

For my part, I felt that if Biden was asking to be the Father of the Nation, his record as a father was in-play. Nothing in President Donald J. Trump’s personal or professional life was off-limits, except for a modicum of protection afforded his youngest son.

The social media guru on my team suggested to me that it was not a coincidence that Biden’s two surviving children, Hunter with the laptop and Ashley with the diary, had accidentally-on-purpose exposed their true selves and their father’s true self—just as they were both getting cleaned up and polished for Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

This struck me as legitimate and gave me the incentive to be true to that construct—as long as the diary was genuine.

I had no role in the procurement of the diary. In fact, I had only been read into the matter, maybe, a week before. Even then, I was only given four pages of the journal.

That Thursday night, though, the team was ready for the launch. I had already written the release using the slug “Stingray,” which was the internal name for the operation, and we had all the socials loaded.

The journal was kept by the first daughter while she was recovering from bad lifestyle choices. She discussed her brothers, her parents, her affairs, and her abuse of drugs and alcohol. She left the journal behind with other items, including the camera, in a Beau Biden Foundation gym bag.

Some of the passages about her father were stunning:

“My Father was—message—I could get love from men.

“I remember having sex with friends @ a young age; Showers w/my dad (probably not appropriate); Being turned on when I was not supposed to be.”

There were vicious disagreements inside Project Veritas about whether this type of release was suitable for the brand. The executive director was so opposed to its release that he resigned over it before O’Keefe decided to hold off.

Although we had all heard Ashley Biden’s voice, no one actually knew what she sounded like.

There were other questions, but the key one to be answered was: How do we know this is not a catfish operation?

O’Keefe took my course and advice. We would give the validation one more round.

After Thursday’s decision to put the diary release on hold until further validations were made, I expected we would meet again Monday. O’Keefe was flying to Texas to confront an undercover target on camera for another project, and I had the Army Reserve that weekend.

I was given the impression Monday would be the day.

Then, I got the call Saturday night that National File got a copy of a Project Veritas PDF of the diary, and they had been posting all day.

Of course, I did not get my final confirmation that the diary was real until the FBI conducted a Nov. 6, 2021, raid of O’Keefe’s apartment in connection with their investigation into the matter.

Like many people before and since, I had already left Project Veritas by then.