Manhattan federal prosecutors on Monday slapped a former CIA software engineer — who was already in prison on child porn charges — with a slew of new charges accusing him of the theft of classified information.
Joshua Schulte (LinkedIn)
Joshua Adam Schulte, 29, was hit with a 13-count superseding indictment Monday that accuses him with everything from the theft of government property to copyright infringement to obstruction of justice.
The feds say Schulte illegally leaked classified information, including national defense information that he believed could be used “to the injury of the United States and the advantage of a foreign nation.”
He faces up to 135 years in prison if convicted.
Schulte has been in Manhattan’s Metropolitan Correctional Center since last year after the feds raided his NYC apartment on suspicion that he had leaked classified documents to Wikileaks in what has been described as one of the worst leaks in CIA history.
But several months after the raid, prosecutors only charged him with kiddie porn — raising questions about who was behind the embarrassing CIA leak.
“Joshua Schulte, a former employee of the CIA, allegedly used his access at the agency to transmit classified material to an outside organization,” Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in announcing the charges.
“As alleged, Schulte utterly betrayed this nation,” assistant FBI Director-in-Charge William Sweeney said.
By Kaja Whitehouse
Source: NYPost
