After a retrial that lasted several weeks, a jury on Wednesday found Joshua Schulte, 33, guilty of all nine charges he faced, including unlawful collection of national defense information. The leak, which WikiLeaks named Vault 7 and was published in 2017, details how the CIA hacks into computers, smartphones, messaging apps and televisions. WikiLeaks said Vault 7 was the organization’s largest release of classified documents ever. The trial, in Manhattan federal court, was Mr. Schulte’s second related to this case. After his first trial in March 2020, a different federal jury convicted him of perjury and contempt of court, but said he was deadlocked on the remaining charges. Mr. Schulte faces a separate trial on child pornography charges. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. After the verdict, Damian Williams, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Mr. Schulte had been convicted of one of the most brazen and destructive acts of espionage in American history. It said Mr Schulte had access to “some of the country’s most valuable cyber intelligence tools used to fight terrorist organizations and other malign influences around the world”. A lawyer assisting Mr. Schulte, who represented himself, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict. Prosecutors said that in 2016, Mr. Schulte stole classified information from the CIA and passed it on to WikiLeaks. He then lied to FBI agents, falsely denying involvement in the leak and offering alternative theories about how the crime could have been committed, prosecutors said. Before the theft, Mr. Schulte was having trouble at work, with his main intelligence project so behind schedule that one of his tools was named “Drifting Deadline,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard said in closing arguments. his speech. Mr Lockard said Mr Schulte was a ticking time bomb who wanted to prove his superiority and punish people he believed had wronged him. “In carrying out this revenge, he caused enormous damage to the national security of this country,” Mr Lockard said. While in prison, Mr. Schulte tried to reveal more information about national defense, according to prosecutors. He smuggled cell phones into the prison and created encrypted email accounts and services to disguise the location where the phone was used, prosecutors said. They said he sent a reporter information about CIA cyber teams and composed tweets that included information about CIA cyber tools. Mr. Schulte argued that the government did not have sufficient evidence to prove his guilt. He called prosecutors’ argument that he was motivated by revenge “pure fantasy” and said that while he was argumentative, he was not angry. —Dustin Volz contributed to this article. Write to Corinne Ramey at [email protected] Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8 It appeared in the July 14, 2022 print edition as “Ex-CIA Software Engineer Convicted of Leak”.
