On Wednesday, a former FBI intelligence analyst in Kansas was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for charges similar to those of former President Donald J. Trump, including charges of willful retention of national security secrets.
Analyst Kendra Kingsbury, 50, has been charged with illegally taking about 386 classified documents from her Dodge City, Kansas, home. plead guilty He was charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act.
in the meantime her sentencing hearing In federal district court in Kansas City, Missouri, Kingsbury said he was loyal and didn’t apologize for taking the record. Kingsbury said he was “guilty of being too honest” because he told the FBI he had the documents at the end of 2017. She criticized her investigators and accused them of defaming her character.
Some of the documents revealed “the government’s most important and secret methods of gathering critical national security information,” prosecutors said. wrote in judgment notesadded that she deleted classified documents while working for the FBI office in Kansas City for more than 12 years.
Trump faces 31 counts of knowingly withholding national defense secrets, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The former president is also charged with conspiring to obstruct justice, fraudulently orchestrating the concealment of information from the government, and lying to investigators.
Mr. Kingsbury, like Mr. Trump, has been accused of not cooperating with investigators or being active in the investigation.
Kingsbury’s attorney said Kingsbury’s actions were the result of a series of underlying health problems he experienced since starting working for the FBI in 2004, as well as the deaths of several family members, including the murder of his uncle in Texas. He claimed that the incident was the cause.
“These events not only caused Ms. Kingsbury physical and emotional pain, but also made her job difficult,” her lawyer Mark Armin wrote.
Her attorney argued that Kingsbury should be on probation for several reasons. She said not only did she endure her public humiliation, but she admitted that she had no criminal record, that she had materials with the FBI, and that her investigation He also pointed out that he agreed to let the police search his house.
“Her situation has been publicized locally and nationally, attracting mention alongside prominent politicians whose behavior eerily resembles Mr Kingsbury,” her lawyer said.
But prosecutors said it was only after they suspected she was being watched that they revealed they had brought back highly classified documents.
In the sentencing memo, prosecutors also said that after reviewing Kingsbury’s phone records, investigators learned that Kingsbury was in contact with a target of the FBI’s counter-terrorism investigation. She denied making or receiving calls over the years, and she offered no explanation as to why she called. Investigators were unable to determine why she contacted the people under investigation.
Prosecutors added that they gave her an opportunity to explain why she took the classified material and how she used it after she was indicted. But prosecutors said Kingsbury declined to provide additional information.
Prosecutors said Ms Kingsbury’s punishment should reflect her actions. “Defendants acted more than recklessly and negligently against the trust placed in them by the FBI,” they wrote in the memo.
Prosecutors emphasized the FBI’s phone calls to the suspect, noting that she was “unhelpful” during the investigation.
Before sentencing Kingsbury, U.S. District Judge Stephen R. Boe agreed with prosecutors, “We will never know what happened.”
