Former FBI analyst goes to prison for stealing classified documents

A former Kansas FBI intelligence analyst received nearly four years in prison in a case that parallels that of former President Donald J. Trump, including the same charge of deliberately withholding national security secrets.

The analyst, Kendra Kingsbury, 50, was charged with improperly removing and unlawfully taking approximately 386 classified documents to her personal residence in Dodge City, Kan. pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Espionage Act.

During her conviction hearing in Kansas City, Mo., on Wednesday, Ms. Kingsbury said she was loyal and made no apology for taking the records. She was “guilty of being too honest,” Ms Kingsbury said, because she told the FBI in late 2017 that she had the documents. She criticized investigators, accusing them of defaming her character.

Some of the documents allegedly revealed the government’s “most important and most secretive methods of gathering vital national security information,” prosecutors said wrote in a sentencing memoadding that she deleted sensitive documents during the more than 12 years she worked at the FBI’s Kansas City office.

In Mr. Trump’s case, he faces 31 counts of willful withholding of national defense secrets, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The former president has also been charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, corrupt plans to conceal information from the government and lying to investigators.

Ms. Kingsbury, like Mr. Trump, was accused of not being helpful or forthright with investigators.

Ms. Kingsbury’s attorney attributed her behavior to a series of underlying events, including serious health problems she experienced after joining the FBI in 2004 and several deaths in the family, including the murder of her uncle in Texas.

“These things not only resulted in physical and mental struggles for Ms Kingsbury, but also caused problems with her work,” her lawyer, Marc Ermine, wrote.

Her lawyer argued that Ms Kingsbury should be put on probation for several reasons. Not only was she publicly shamed, he said, but he also pointed to her lack of criminal record, her admission to the FBI that she had the material and her permission to let agents search her home.

“Her situation has been publicized locally and nationally – she was named alongside prominent political figures whose behavior seems eerily analogous to Ms Kingsbury’s,” her lawyers said.

But prosecutors said she revealed she only took the highly sensitive documents home after she suspected she was under surveillance.

In their sentencing memo, prosecutors also revealed that after reviewing her phone records, officers learned that Ms. Kingsbury had contacted subjects of FBI counter-terrorism investigations. She denied making and receiving the calls for years and gave no explanation as to why she made them. Investigators couldn’t figure out why she had contacted people under investigation.

Prosecutors added that after she was charged, they offered her a chance to explain why she took home the classified materials and how she had used them. But Ms Kingsbury declined to provide any additional information, prosecutors said.

According to prosecutors, Ms Kingsbury’s sentence should reflect her behavior. They wrote in the memo that the “defendant was more than reckless or careless with the trust placed in her by the FBI.”

Prosecutors highlighted the calls to subjects of agency investigations, noting that she was also “unhelpful” during the investigation.

Before sentencing Ms. Kingsbury, Federal District Court Judge Stephen R. Bough agreed with prosecutors that “we’ll never know what happened.”