OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
12:54 PM – Thursday, September 14, 2023
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) software engineer, Joshua Schulte, who was previously convicted for disclosing secret CIA information to WikiLeaks in 2017, was charged on Wednesday for the possession of over 3,000 images and videos of child pornography.
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Schulte, 34, now faces sentencing in Manhattan federal court that is scheduled for January 10th, 2024.
Prosecutors presented proof that the former CIA employee possessed and transported thousands of images and videos showing rape and sexual abuse of children as young as two years old.
Federal prosecutors stated that Schulte moved from Washington, D.C., to New York in order to work at a financial services company, bringing the disturbing files with him.
Allegedly, he organized the disturbing media based on the victims’ identities and characteristics, hiding it under multiple layers of coded encryption on his home desktop computer, prosecutors said.
Additional materials were also found in another file on his computer that had three layers of password protection, which was discovered during his CIA leaks investigation.
Schulte, who resigned from the CIA in November 2016, now has the potential to face decades in prison for Wednesday’s conviction. This accompanies his conviction in July 2022 on charges related to releasing a trove of CIA classified information through WikiLeaks.
He was found guilty in federal court last year on eight espionage charges and one obstruction charge regarding the so-called Vault 7 leak. Ultimately, he had the charges upheld by an appeals court on August 29th.
Regarding Schulte’s CIA leak conviction, the Vault 7 leak uncovered how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in foreign spying operations and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices. The leaked materials concerned software tools that the CIA used to surveil people outside of the United States.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Schulte leaked the materials out of spite because he was unhappy with how management treated him and he felt that the agency ignored his complaints regarding work environment.
Therefore, he tried “to burn to the ground” the work that he had helped the agency to create, the Justice Department claimed.
“Hundreds of people could have stolen it,” Schulte stated in his closing statements at the trial in 2022. “The government’s case is riddled with reasonable doubt. There’s simply no motive here.”
Prosecutors also noted the size of his classified CIA document release.
“Today, Schulte has been convicted for one of the most brazen and damaging acts of espionage in American history,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after Schulte was found guilty.
Williams added that Schulte leaked some of the nation’s “most valuable intelligence-gathering cyber tools used to battle terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the globe” to the public and U.S. military enemies.
After Schulte’s July 2022 conviction, Williams described Schulte’s leak as one of the most “brazen” and “damaging” acts of espionage in American history.
In a statement regarding the ex-CIA employee’s child pornography files being found, Williams claimed, “Joshua Schulte has already been held accountable for endangering our nation’s security, and today’s verdict holds him accountable for endangering our nation’s children as well.”
Schulte’s lawyer, César de Castro, did not respond to a request for comment.
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