Former CIA engineer Joshua Schulte convicted of spying over WikiLeaks dump

Former CIA engineer Joshua Schulte was convicted on Wednesday of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks after a mistrial left him free of eight out of 10 charges in March 2020. A federal jury in the Southern District of New York reached guilty verdicts on eight espionage charges and one obstruction charge after four days …

[Pascal Monett]

"one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history"

I think it's more the NSA that is guilty of that.

[JimboSmith]

Re: "one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history"

So beating Snowden then, that’s impressive!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Sentencing for Schulte has been delayed due to unrelated child sexual abuse material charges against the former CIA employee

If the first time around you cannot convict, there are many ways to persuade the jury…

[JimboSmith]

As far as I know, if the US is like the UK then unless this ‘other’ material was part of the current case it shouldn’t have been mentioned in court to the jurors.

[KBeee]

It can be mentioned to jurors in the UK after the verdict has been reached.

I was once on a jury for a charge of assault on a minicab driver by a van driver. After we found him guilty we were told the guy had about a dozen other convictions for assault on his record.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Sat on 2 cases as a UK juror, after arguing back n forth we finally got the verdict of guilty.

Judge was a bit pissed over the time we took & said we could leave if we wanted to, but we all wanted to see what happened next. When we heard the similar charges the defendant had pleaded guilty to, those on the initial "Not Guilty" gave a audible gasp.

The second case we sat down & decided the defendant was Guilty within a minute of sitting down, we then had a debate of how long we should "pad this out, to make it look good & if we could get a cup of tea out of it". The fun started after delivering the verdict when his prior record was read out, he disputed one of the former charges on his record to the judge, had that explained to him by the judge when he finally conceded that was correct.

[JimboSmith]

Yeah sorry I meant before the verdict.

My dad had to be switched from one jury to another before the trial started. This is because when they asked if any juror knew of any reason they were unsuitable he said “Yes” to much surprise.

When asked why he thought he was unsuitable, he looked over at the judge, waved and said “Hi Bob*” he was switched shortly afterwards.

*name changed

[Anonymous Coward]

> shouldn’t have been mentioned in court to the jurors.

Oh, of course not! That would be very undemocratic.

On the other hand, if any jurors happened to read about it after it was accidentally leaked to the press and/or the news ended up on some targeted Facebook advertising or similar… it would be very unfortunate indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a crime to spy Mr. WikiLeaks having a dump?

[Claverhouse]

Since When is Idealism 'Misguided' when it's Against the Government ?

In the retrial, which started last month, the prosecution painted Schulte as a traitor who sought revenge against his former employer and the government at large and the furthest thing possible from a concerned whistleblower.

“There was no misguided idealism here; he did it because he was angry and disgruntled

.

.

No reason one can't be both.

[DS999]

Handiwritten note to "delete suspicious emails"

So clearly not a criminal mastermind then.

[Ian Johnston]

Schulte, who curiously chose this go-around to represent himself and even garnered praise from the judge for his performance, refuted the assertion.

No, he denied it. If he had refuted it he would have walked free. Guardian journalists and other illiterates may think that deny and refute are synonyms, but I expect better of El Reg.

[Mayday]

Child Abuse Material

"Sentencing for Schulte has been delayed due to unrelated child sexual abuse material charges against the former CIA employee, to which he has pleaded not guilty. "

Gee, I wonder how said material wound up on his computer?

[BenjaminEdelman]

Joshua was right

The CIA could stand to have their reach rolled back, I would like to see more principled and disaffected employees join in to make their voices heard through public disclosures of classified documents. It's too bad that he got caught, the people pursuing him through prosecution were wrong, their culture of state secrets will fail in time, their faction in the IC is on the wrong side of history.