By Steve Neavling
An FBI intelligence analyst who was indicted on charges of illegally removing troves of classified documents and other national security information and storing them at her home over the course of more than a decade was sentenced Wednesday to nearly four years in prison, the Justice Department said in a news release.
The analyst, Kendra Kingsbury, 50, pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Espionage Act.
The case has received extra attention because it bears a close resembles to that of former President Trump, who was charged with mishandling classified documents and storing them at his residence, Mar-a-Lago.
Kingsbury, of Kansas, had national security clearance and worked in the FBI’s Kansas City Field Office until she was suspended in December 2017. She removed records between 2004 and 2017.
In all, Kingsbury improperly removed and unlawfully retained about 386 classified records in her home. Some of the documents contained “extremely sensitive national defense information,” the Justice Department said.
Kingsbury admitted that she retained and destroyed other documents that could have contained classified information and national defense information.
The FBI’s Omaha Field Office investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Edwards for the Western District of Missouri and trial attorney Scott Claffee of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section prosecuted the case.
