June 23 (UPI) — A former FBI analyst has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for retaining hundreds of national defense documents at her residence in violation of the Espionage Act.
Kendra Kingsbury, 50, of Garden City, Ka., was sentenced Wednesday to 46 months in prison followed by three years’ supervised released after pleading guilty to two counts of unlawfully retaining the government documents in October.
Kingsbury had been an intelligence analyst for the FBI for more than a dozen years and was assigned to different FBI squads with particular focus on drug trafficking, violent crime, gangs and counterintelligence while holding top secret security clearance, which gave her access to national defense and classified information.
From June 2004 to about Dec. 15, 2017, Kingsbury unlawfully took and kept some 386 classified documents at her personal residence, including some that the Justice Department characterized as having been “extremely sensitive national defense information.”
“The documents include details of the FBI’s nationwide objectives and priorities, including specific open investigations across multiple field offices,” prosecutors said in the 2021 indictment.
“In addition, there are documents relating to sensitive human-source operations in national security investigations, intelligence gaps regarding hostile foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations, and the technical capabilities of the FBI against counterintelligence and counterterrorism targets.”
The Justice Department also said that Kingsbury told investigators that she destroyed other documents during her FBI employment that could have been classified.
The sentence was handed down as former President Donald Trump faces 37 similar charges over the handling of classified documents at his Florida residence after leaving office.
