Federal prosecutors will retry a former CIA programmer on espionage charges after a jury couldn’t come to a decision about whether he leaked a trove of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Assistant U.S. Attorney David Denton told a judge Monday that the Justice Department “does intend to retry Mr. Schulte on the espionage charges.”
In March, a jury found Joshua Schulte guilty of lying to the FBI and contempt of court, but it was deadlocked on whether to convict the computer engineer of the biggest theft of classified documents in the history of the CIA.
Denton said prosecutors would “clarify” the charges but would not add any new criminal charges.
In March 2017, months after Schulte quit the CIA, WikiLeaks released a trove of documents that revealed CIA hacking tools used to spy on foreign targets.
Schulte was arrested in August 2017 on child pornography charges and later indicted on charges related to the breach.
Prosecutors alleged Schulte leaked the documents because he was a disgruntled employee who had fought with colleagues before stealing the files. Schulte’s defense blamed the leak on the CIA having weak cybersecurity.
Judge Paul Crotty said Monday that he did not expect jury selection in the new trial to begin before September because of the coronavirus pandemic.
