A previous FBI intelligence analyst was sentenced Wednesday to approximately four years in prison for illegally retaining hundreds of classified documents at her home.
Kendra Kingsbury, 50, of Garden Metropolis, Kansas, was sentenced to 3 many years and 10 months in federal jail without having parole by U.S. District Decide Stephen R. Bough.
In October, Kingsbury pleaded responsible to two counts of unlawfully retaining paperwork connected to national protection. Comparable to the costs facing former President Donald Trump, Kingsbury’s situation concerned alleged violations of the Espionage Act.
Kingsbury, who held a Major Magic formula/SCI protection clearance and was an intelligence analyst for the FBI for much more than 12 decades, was accused of frequently getting rid of delicate governing administration components from a protected workspace. Some of the paperwork she removed and retained in her North Kansas City residence bundled national defense-linked categorized paperwork.
Prosecutors alleged in courtroom files that Kingsbury improperly eradicated and unlawfully retained about 386 classified paperwork. The retained files had been saved in several formats, including tricky drives and compact discs, prosecutors claimed.
Kingsbury allegedly admitted to investigators that she retained and destroyed other files that could have integrated categorised or nationwide protection-connected information and facts.
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said, “The FBI eventually identified that about 20,000 documents that originated both at the FBI or some other government company were being discovered in the defendant’s residence.”
Kingsbury set national safety at risk “by retaining classified details in her residence that would have, if in the erroneous arms, exposed some of the government’s most vital and secretive approaches of gathering vital national safety intelligence,” they wrote.
Some of the documents have been categorized “Solution” by the FBI, prosecutors mentioned, and they thorough intelligence resources and procedures tied to the federal government’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence initiatives, as effectively as defense against cyberthreats.
Files joined to sensitive human resource functions in national protection investigations and the FBI’s complex abilities had been also observed, in addition to paperwork that delved into the FBI’s priorities and goals or that were being tied to open investigations, prosecutors said.
The national protection data Kingsbury unlawfully retained also included paperwork classified by an additional government company as “Top secret,” in accordance to court docket files.
Allegedly tucked into that batch of retained documents was data about intelligence resources and approaches similar to U.S. federal government attempts to accumulate intelligence on terrorist teams, like al Qaeda, and information about a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden.
Prosecutors mentioned the FBI found Kingsbury had also “initiated searches” in categorized FBI databases using details obtained from the sensitive and categorized govt supplies uncovered at her dwelling.
An FBI investigation into why the paperwork were taken off “revealed much more questions and concerns than answers,” prosecutors said.
In pressing for probation, Marc Ermine, an attorney for Kingsbury, experienced argued that she “suffered from substantial overall health challenges and family tragedies all through her tenure with the FBI,” like the murder of a household member, that led to mental and physical struggles and brought on problem at operate.
Kingsbury’s attorneys did not immediately react to a request for comment about her sentencing, which will come about two months in advance of Trump’s scheduled trial day.
Trump is accused of triggering categorized and national protection information to be removed and saved in various parts of his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. He pleaded not responsible in Miami this month to expenses that consist of 31 felony counts related to retention of labeled materials.
Ken Dilanian contributed.
