Fed Who Had Classified Docs At Home Gets Prison Sentence After Guilty Plea To Same Charge Facing Trump

 A former FBI intelligence official was sentenced to nearly four years in prison this week for keeping classified documents in her home, including her bathroom.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen R. Bough sentenced Kendra Kingsbury to 46 months in prison on Wednesday after she pled guilty to two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to the national defense.

Kingsbury, 50, was charged in May 2021 with two counts of violating 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), Willful Retention of National Defense Information.

Both of the counts Kingsbury was charged with carried the possibility of a 10 year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine.

The exact statute that Kingsbury was charged with violating is the exact same statute that former President Donald Trump was charged with violating earlier this month. Trump was hit with 31 counts of allegedly violating 18 U.S.C. § 793(e).

In Trump’s case, all the charges that he faces are over documents that federal investigators recovered after issuing a grand jury subpoena to the former president last June. Trump faces additional charges over allegations that he lied to investigators and tried to obstruct the investigation.

“I cannot fathom why you would jeopardize our nation by leaving these types of documents in your bathtub,” Bough told Kingsbury.

Photos released from the federal indictment against Trump showed that the former president also stored boxes of documents in his bathroom.

 

The federal indictment of Donald Trump includes photos of documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago in various, sometimes haphazard, ways. This image from April 2021 shows boxes that were moved from the business center in the club to a bathroom and shower. https://t.co/hbW0MM1FCq pic.twitter.com/O4CiA64JzH

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 9, 2023

The most disturbing part about the case against Kingsbury was that prosecutors said their investigation turned up more questions than answers.

“Investigators reviewed Kingsbury’s telephone records, which revealed a number of suspicious calls,” the Department of Justice said in a statement. “Kingsbury contacted phone numbers associated with subjects of counterterrorism investigations, and these individuals also made telephone calls to Kingsbury.”

“Investigators have not been able to determine why Kingsbury contacted these individuals, or why these individuals contacted her,” the DOJ added. “Kingsbury declined to provide the government with any further information.”