FBI analyst gets prison time in classified docs case, raising Trump comparisons

The Justice Department announced in a press release that a former FBI analyst was sentenced over classified documents to nearly four years in prison on Wednesday, June 22. She had pleaded guilty to retaining hundreds of national defense documents at her home in violation of the Espionage Act.

50-year-old Kendra Kingsbury received a 46-month sentence on two counts of unlawfully retaining government documents. She had been an intelligence analyst for the FBI.

From 2004 to 2017, she took and kept 386 documents at her home. According to the Justice Department, Kingsbury told investigators she destroyed other documents that could have been classified.

“The documents include details of the FBI’s nationwide objectives and priorities, including specific open investigations across multiple field offices,” prosecutors said in Kingsbury’s 2021 indictment. “In addition, there are documents relating to sensitive human-source operations in national security investigations, intelligence gaps regarding hostile foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations, and the technical capabilities of the FBI against counterintelligence and counterterrorism targets.”

According to Straight Arrow News’ exclusive Media Miss tool, this story is being missed on the right. All sources covering it either lean left or are in the center. Some of the sources covering this story from the left compared the former FBI analyst’s case to former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case.

“The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen R. Bough, offered the first courtroom clue since Trump’s indictment about what the former president can expect if he is found guilty,” The Kansas City Star said in its report. Insider added that “the case against Kingsbury runs eerily similar to Trump’s indictment.”

There are a couple key differences between the two cases. The former president was charged with 31 violations of the Espionage Act, as opposed to just two. While Kingsbury pleaded guilty, Trump pleaded not guilty earlier in June.