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'Great Danger': Couple Sentenced in Submarine Secrets Case
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Citing the “great danger” that a Navy engineer and his wife posed to U.S. security, a federal judge gave both of them lengthy prison terms Wednesday for a plot to sell secrets about nuclear submarines to what they thought was a representative of a foreign government.
U.S. District Judge Gina Groh, who in August rejected earlier plea agreements that had called for reduced sentencing guidelines, sentenced Jonathan Toebbe to more than 19 years and his wife, Diana Toebbe, to nearly 22 years. The sentences were handed down on Jonathan Toebbe's 44th birthday.
The Annapolis, Maryland, couple and their attorneys described the defendants' struggles with mental health issues and alcohol and said they were anxious about the nation's political climate when they sold secrets in exchange for $100,000 in cryptocurrency.
Groh said their tale “reads like a crime novel or a movie script” and that Jonathan Toebbe’s “actions and greedy self-serving intentions placed military service members at sea and every citizen of this country in a vulnerable position and at risk of harm from adversaries.”
Diana Toebbe, who admitted acting as a lookout for her husband, received an enhanced sentence after the judge disclosed during the couple's combined five-hour sentencing hearing that Diana Toebbe tried to send her husband two letters from jail.
he letters, which were read in court, were intercepted before they could be delivered. In one of them, Diana Toebbe told her husband to flush the letter down a toilet after reading it. She encouraged him to lie about her involvement in the scheme and say she "didn't know anything about any of this."
The judge said she lacked genuine remorse and didn't take responsibility for her actions.
“This is an exceptional story, right out of the movies,” Groh said.
Prior to sentencing, Jonathan Toebbe described his battles with stress in taking on additional duties and his own battle with alcohol. He said he experienced warning signs of a nervous breakdown over 18 months that he failed to recognize.
“I believed that my family was in dire threat, that democracy itself was under collapse," he said. That belief overwhelmed him, he said, and led him to believe he had to take “precipitous action to try to save them from grave harm.”
Prosecutors said Toebbe abused his access to top-secret government information and repeatedly sold details about the design and performance of Virginia-class submarines to someone he believed was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Diana Toebbe, 46, who was teaching at a private school in Maryland at the time of the couple’s arrest last October, admitted she acted as a lookout at several prearranged “dead-drop” locations where memory cards containing the secret information were left behind.
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The memory cards were devices concealed in objects such as a chewing gum wrapper and a peanut butter sandwich. The couple was arrested in October 2021 after Jonathan Toebbe placed a card 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 previous testimony.
The couple was sentenced for their guilty pleas in September in federal court in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to one felony count each of conspiracy to communicate restricted data.
In August, Groh rejected their initial guilty pleas to the same charges, saying the sentencing options were “strikingly deficient” considering the seriousness of the case. The previous sentencing range agreed to by lawyers for Jonathan Toebbe had called for a potential punishment of up to 17 years in prison. Prosecutors had sought three years for Diana Toebbe.
During a hearing last December, Diana Toebbe's attorney, Barry Beck, asserted that the couple was looking to flee the United States due to their contempt for then-President Donald Trump.
During a search of the couple’s home, FBI agents 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 previous testimony.
She said her decision to participate in the scheme was “catastrophic,” as she is the mother of children ages 12 and 16, and that she should have tried to talk her husband out of it.
“I didn’t think of my children, who have suffered the most,” she said. “Their lives will forever be marked by the decision that I made.”
Groh said that choice was "deliberate and calculated.” She admonished Beck, who had labeled his client as merely an accomplice in seeking a lesser sentence.
“Your client put this country in great danger,” Groh told Beck. “No matter what you call it, the harm to this nation was great.”
The FBI has said the scheme began in April 2020, when Jonathan Toebbe sent a package of Navy documents to a foreign government and expressed interest in selling operations manuals, performance reports and other sensitive information. That package was obtained by the FBI in December 2020 through its legal attaché office in an unspecified foreign country, setting off a months-long undercover operation.
An FBI agent posing as a foreign government's representative made contact with Toebbe, ultimately paying in cryptocurrency for the information Toebbe was offering.
Groh said about $54,000 of the cryptocurrency has been recovered. She imposed fines of around $50,000 to each defendant.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/11/09/great-danger-couple-sentenced-submarine-secrets-case.html
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Exonerated: Why I fought to clear my name in Jeffrey Epstein allegation By Alan Dershowitz
For all my professional life I have fought for the rights of others. Then, eight years ago, I was accused of sexual abuse and found myself fighting for my own rights.
The accusation against me was unique: In other “Me Too” and related cases, the accused and the accuser knew each other. Sometimes they were lovers, office colleagues or friends. The issue was often one of degree: Was there consent? Did the flirtation amount to harassment?
My case was different: The issue was black and white; there was no gray area. Either I was totally innocent or guilty.
Now my accuser has recognized she may have made a mistake in identifying me as one of the men with whom she had sex. She has dismissed all claims against me and has ended the litigation. The accusation against me, it turns out, may have been a case of mistaken identity. The bottom line is — and as I have asserted from the very beginning — I did absolutely nothing wrong.
This case of mistaken identity has taken a terrible toll on me and my family. It has silenced my voice on behalf of Israel and other causes so important to me, especially now with recent rises in anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. As a direct result of this mistaken allegation, I was not invited to speak at Temple Emanu-El, the 92nd Street Y, the Ramaz School and several universities.
I have fought against the excesses of “cancel culture” not only because I was a victim of it but because it poses a great danger to freedom of speech for the speakers and for those who are denied the opportunity to listen to them.
I consistently and vehemently denied these allegations, not only to restore and protect my own reputation but to combat the growing recent phenomenon of guilt by accusation in the court of public opinion. I wrote a book by that title to warn readers of the dangers of crediting accusations without examining the evidence — or lack thereof. I will continue to fight hard on behalf of civil liberties, free speech, due process and the right to counsel.
In one respect, it was easy for me to fight back: I have never engaged in any sexual misconduct. That is why I have sought, and will continue to seek, the unsealing of every document, deposition, recording and video in my case — over the strong objections of my opponents. Others, even those falsely accused of specific misconduct against a particular individual, cannot fight back without risking disclosure of other misconduct against other people. I have no such fear.
I was repeatedly advised to remain silent so that the accusation could “fade away” with the passage of time. That was not an option for me; I wanted my name cleared.
We live in a dangerous time of deep divisiveness, reflected both in the just-concluded election and in important institutions such as universities and the media. People tend to take sides. Because I defended President Donald Trump against what I regarded as an unconstitutional impeachment, many people, including former friends, believe I am on the wrong side of history. They hoped I was also on the wrong side of the accusation against me. This hope was magnified by the fact that I represented perhaps the most despised criminal defendant in recent history, Jeffrey Epstein.
I am proud of my legal representation of controversial, even detested, individuals, and I plan to continue to provide it, in the spirit of John Adams, who defended the despised British soldiers accused of the Boston massacre.
I wish I had never met Epstein, but I did the right thing in defending him, especially because he was so hated. People can disagree with my choice of clients, and as a law professor for a half-century, I welcome reasoned disagreement. But no one should misuse these disagreements as a justification for blindly supporting accusations in a rush to judgment.
I hope my case becomes an object lesson in the continuing need for a presumption of innocence until and unless proven guilty. The “Me Too” movement has generally been a force for good, exposing real predatory sexual misconduct by the guilty. But like every good movement, it is subject to misuse and abuse by the few who would exploit it for their own benefit. We need reliable processes for distinguishing the latter from the former.
Since the biblical Joseph was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, civilizations have struggled to strike the appropriate balance in recognizing that accusations can be truthful or false. I commend Virginia Giuffre, who suffered much at Epstein’s hands, for having the courage to come forward and admit she may have made a mistake in identifying me. Now we can both move on with our lives.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/exonerated-why-i-fought-to-clear-my-name-in-jeffrey-epstein-allegation/