![]() If every reporter in every community would wonder about the courts, and judges, we would not be so behind on the topic and the nation would not be startled with what we see at local level every day.įor some reason we have given judges media immunity in this country. Until now, Pro Publica had struggled with their social media impact, but this topic had them firing on all cylinders. The video they put up online shows the reporter's creative, or newsgathering process. That is impactful reporting and it was done by one of Pro Publica's junior reporters who had started as a freelancer just three years ago. ![]() Newrooms across the country picked up the story and now everyone is talking judges and disclosures. Their social media was not keeping up, and videos had far less than some of our freelance work on the judicary had.īut this weekend, the newsroom dipped its toe into the well of judicial reporting, by discussing the work they did on Justice Clarence Thomas and his lack of disclosure these past twenty years.įallout from the reporting was swift. Pro Publica has always done excellent reporting on issues that impact every community. A number much higher than they got when it came to abortion and other reporting. The country to which Jonathan Toebbe was looking to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.įBI agents who searched the couple’s home found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “go-bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to court testimony last year." We wanted to report on the judicary so started thinking about how to do that" a young reporter from Pro Publica said in a YouTube podcast that got over 85,000 views this weekend. Jonathan Toebbe, who held a top-secret security clearance through the Defense Department, had agreed as part of the plea deal to help federal officials with locating and retrieving all classified information in his possession, as well as the cryptocurrency paid to him. That set off a monthslong undercover operation in which an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering. ![]() That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions to his supposed contact for how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said. The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and wrote that he was interested in selling to that country operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to testimony Tuesday. ![]() The couple was arrested after he placed a memory card at a dead drop location in Jefferson County, West Virginia. The memory cards were devices concealed in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. District Judge Gina Groh said that while she generally honors plea agreements, in this case she said the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the charges.ĭiana Toebbe, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, was accused of acting as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations at which memory cards containing the secret information were left behind. Prosecutors also sought three years for Diana Toebbe. Prosecutors said Tuesday that such a sentence would be one of the most significant imposed in modern times under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The sentencing range agreed to by lawyers for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a potential punishment between roughly 12 years and 17 years in prison. Jonathan and Diana Toebbe of Annapolis, Maryland, pleaded guilty in February in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data. (AP) - A Navy nuclear engineer and his wife withdrew their guilty pleas Tuesday in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secrets about American nuclear-powered warships after a federal judge rejected plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines.
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