Former CIA engineer who gave Wikileaks "Vault 7" secrets, sentenced to 40 years

Courtroom sketch by Joshua Schulte at March 4, 2020 jury deliberations in NYC

Note that some of what is written here is meant as sarcasm, snark, and my opinion about the guy. It should be easily recognizable to those of you who read Brain Flushings.

Joshua Schulte, 35, is a former CIA software engineer who provided Wikileaks with a treasure trove of stolen CIA secrets that was released to the public in 2017. It is described as the biggest theft of classified information in CIA history. 

He was sentenced in Manhattan federal court on Thursday and will serve only 40 years in prison.

But along with the classified information, Schulte was also found to be in possession of child sexual abuse images and videos, making him not only a traitor, but a pile of human garbage. 

"We will likely never know the full extent of the damage, but I have no doubt it was massive," Judge Jesse M. Furman said as he announced the sentence.

The so-called Vault 7 leak exposed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices. 

Prior to his arrest, Schulte had helped create the hacking tools as a coder at the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia. So he learned to code but perhaps should have been a coal miner and would have avoided the incarceration. Oh wait, he still would have been busted for the child porn.

In requesting a life sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney David William Denton Jr. asked for a life sentence. He said Schulte was responsible for "the most damaging disclosures of classified information in American history."

Given a chance to speak, Schulte complained mostly about harsh conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, calling his cell, "my torture cage." 

Boo-freaking-hoo.

The traitor also claimed that prosecutors had once offered him a plea deal that would have called for a 10-year prison sentence and that it was unfair of them to now seek a life term. He said he objected to the deal because he would have been required to relinquish his right to appeal. It looks as if he chose the wrong door and won the booby prize.

"This is not justice the government seeks, but vengeance," the piece of human excrement whined.

Immediately after sentencing, the judge criticized some of Schulte's half-hour of remarks, saying he was "blown away" by Schulte's "complete lack of remorse and acceptance of responsibility."

The judge said Schulte was "not driven by any sense of altruism," but instead was "motivated by anger, spite and perceived grievance" against others at the agency who he believed had ignored his complaints about the work environment and lack of child porn access.

Furman said Schulte continued committing crimes from behind bars by trying to leak more classified materials and by creating a hidden file on his computer that contained 2,400 images of child sexual abuse that he continued to view from jail. 

I don't know about you, but I'm all in for the death sentence for people who commit and support child sexual abuse if it can be clearly proven.

During a two-hour proceeding, Furman noted a one-page letter the government had forwarded from CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen, who described Schulte's crimes as causing "exceptionally grave harm to U.S. national security and the CIA."

Cohen added: "His actions cost the Agency hundreds of millions of dollars; degraded its ability to collect foreign intelligence against America's adversaries; placed directly at risk CIA personnel, programs, and assets; and jeopardized U.S. national security by degrading the CIA's ability to conduct its mission. In short, Mr. Schulte's actions inflicted heavy costs on the United States."

A mistrial was declared in 2020 at Schulte's original trial after the jury was deadlocked on the most serious counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information. 

He was convicted at a July 2022 trial of charges in connection with the classified leak.

Last fall, he was convicted in the case over the child sexual abuse images, which originated when a computer that Schulte possessed after he left the CIA and moved to New York from Virginia was found to contain the images and videos that he had downloaded from the internet from 2009 to March 2017.

Of the 40-year sentence, Furman said the bulk of it was for the CIA theft while six years and eight months of it were for the convictions over the child sexual abuse materials.

In a statement afterward, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Schulte "betrayed his country by committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history. When the FBI caught him, Schulte doubled down and tried to cause even more harm to this nation by waging what he describe as an 'information' war' of publishing top secret information from behind bars."

Meanwhile, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange remains in Britain, where he has battled the courts for years to avoid being sent to the U.S., where he faces 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse.

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CIA coder charged in massive leak: he was being 'vindictive'

New York -- A CIA software engineer is on trial for the largest leak of classified information in the agency's history. He was "prepared to do anything" to betray the CIA, federal prosecutors said Monday. His defense lawyer argued that the coder had been scapegoated for a breach that exposed highly classified cyber-weapons and spying techniques.

A Manhattan jury heard conflicting portrayals of Joshua Schulte, a former CIA coder who has been accused of sending WikiLeaks a large portion of the agency's computer hacking arsenal used to conduct foreign espionage. WikiLeaks is the website that had compromised the security of the United States by leaking a myriad of classified information provided to them by US Army's Bradley Manning, a man who identifies as a woman.

Schulte left a trail of evidence despite learned attempts to erase his digital fingerprints, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Laroche said in closing arguments. Schulte became disgruntled at the CIA, he said, and took meticulous steps to plan -- and cover up -- the 2016 theft.

"He was the only one who had the motive, the means and the opportunity to steal the information," Laroche said. "He was prepared to do anything to get back at the CIA."

He should be shot and hanged then shot again.

Defense attorney Sabrina Shroff called Schulte a patriot who was wrongly accused by an agency under intense pressure to solve the embarrassing leak. The four-week trial raised more questions than it answered and exposed alarming security lapses within the agency, she said, without evidence.

"The government cannot tell you which of the many people with access to this data" stole the classified archive, she said. "It wasn't Mr. Schulte who did this." It was Trump, if you ask her.

Jurors are expected to begin deliberating Tuesday. Schulte faces counts of illegal gathering of national defence information, unauthorized computer access, theft of government property and making false statements, among other charges. If found guilty, unlike Hillary Clinton who used a private bathroom-located private server for her government classified emails, Schulte will go to prison.

Schulte, 31, worked for a CIA group in Langley, VA. His team designed computer code used to spy on foreign government adversaries. The Vault 7 leak, as it is called, revealed to our enemies how the CIA hacks into Android and Apple cell phones.

Prosecutors have said the leak was devastating to national security, as it exposed CIA operatives, brought intelligence gathering to a halt and left allies wondering whether the U.S. could be trusted with sensitive information.

Shoot once, hang, then shoot again.

"The defendant was prepared to burn down the United States government," Laroche said. "He is an angry and vindictive man."

Bradley Manning in drag

While it hasn't been publicly announced, Schulte is planning to ask for Bradley's [aka Chelsea] junk in marriage if he can walk away from this situation without going to the slammer.

Manning, as you may recall, had his prison sentence commuted by then-President Obama and was released in 2017 after serving only seven years in prison.

He should have been shot, then hung, and shot once more.

Schulte is also accused of attempting to leak secrets after his arrest by using a contraband cell phone in the federal lockup where he is being held and creating encrypted email and secret social media accounts, proving that he isn't very smart and possibly not a very good coder.

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