Judge rejects plea agreement in case of sale of submarine secrets

CHARLESTON, WV (AP) — A Navy nuclear engineer and his wife withdrew their guilty pleas Tuesday in a case related to an alleged plot to sell secrets about nuclear-powered U.S. warships after that a federal judge rejected plea deals that had asked for sentencing guidelines.

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.

The sentence range agreed upon by Jonathan Toebbe’s lawyers provided for a potential punishment of between approximately 12 and 17 years in prison. 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. Prosecutors also asked for three years for Diana Toebbe.

US District Judge Gina Groh said that while she generally honors plea agreements, in this case she said the sentencing options were “shockingly poor” considering the seriousness of the charges.

Groh said the act the couple pleaded guilty to was done “for selfish and greedy reasons, but could have caused great harm” to the Navy and others.

“I find no justifiable reason to accept any of these plea deals,” Groh said.

Wearing orange jail jumpsuits and sitting at separate tables, the pair withdrew their separate guilty pleas, prompting Groh to set a trial date for Jan. 17.

Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design elements and performance characteristics of the Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed to be a representative of a foreign government, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.

Diana 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 end” locations where memory cards containing the information were left. secret.

Memory cards were hidden devices in objects like a gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested after they planted a memory card at a dead end in Jefferson County, West Virginia.

None of the information was classified as top secret or secret, falling into a third category considered confidential, according to Tuesday’s testimony.

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 operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information to that country. He included in the package, which had a Pittsburgh return address, instructions for his alleged contact on how to establish a covert relationship with him, prosecutors said.

That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in the unspecified foreign country. That triggered a month-long undercover operation in which Toebbe was contacted by an agent posing as a representative of a foreign country, ultimately paying $100,000 in cryptocurrency in exchange for the information Toebbe was offering.

Jonathan Toebbe, who had a top-secret security clearance through the Department of Defense, had agreed as part of the plea deal to help federal officials locate and recover all of the classified information in his possession, as well as the cryptocurrency found. I pay.

The country to which Jonathan Toebbe sought to sell the information has not been identified in court documents and was not disclosed in court.

FBI agents searching the couple’s home found a trash bag of shredded documents, thousands of dollars in cash, valid children’s passports and a “travel bag” containing a USB flash drive and latex gloves, according to testimony. court last year.

During a December 2021 hearing, Diana Toebbe’s attorneys denied prosecution claims citing 2019 messages exchanged by the couple in which she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest. Instead, the defense said it was contempt for then-President Donald Trump as the reason behind the couple’s emigration plans.

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