The Department of Justice on Tuesday renewed its case against Joshua Adam Schulte, a former CIA engineer suspected of being the source of the biggest leak in the agency’s history.
A superseding indictment charging Schulte in connection with leaking classified CIA material to the WikiLeaks website was filed as expected in Manhattan federal court, where months earlier a mistrial was declared after a jury was unable to reach a verdict upon deliberating for days on whether or not to convict him over the same alleged criminal conduct.
Schulte is suspected of leaking CIA hacking tools to WikiLeaks published by the website in 2017 as part of a series of releases it referred to as “Vault 7.” He has also been charged in connection with allegedly leaking classified information about his case to reporters while imprisoned ahead of trial, and furthermore he faces copyright and child pornography charges stemming from a search conducted of his computers.
A court trial took place earlier this year to consider the leak charges against Schulte, but the jury failed to reach a verdict on most of the counts and a mistrial was declared. Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, subsequently said in a court filing last month that he expected a grand jury to be summoned in early June to consider a new indictment charging Schulte again with nine related counts.
Indeed, the superseding indictment filed Tuesday charges Schulte with nine counts in all, including charges of illegally accessing, gathering and transmitting national defense information, as well as one count of obstruction, two counts of accessing a computer without authorization and two counts of transmitting a harmful computer code.
Public defenders representing Schulte did not immediately return a message requesting comment.
Schulte, 31, was found guilty during the first trial of making false statements to law enforcement and contempt of court. He has not yet been tried yet on the copyright and child pornography charges.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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