Second Trump-era leaker sentenced to four years in prison
FTA: Former FBI agent Terry Albury was sentenced to four years in prison Thursday in the second leak prosecution of the Trump era, after federal prosecutors and a Minnesota judge rejected Albury’s argument that more senior officials faced much lighter penalties for similar activities.
An attorney for Albury argued for a lighter sentence, and said the results of leak cases were “inequitable.” The lawyer cited former CIA Director David Petraeus, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2015 and received probation for sharing top secret information with his mistress and biographer.
A Justice Department attorney rejected the claim of a double standard by saying that it was offensive to suggest that leak cases are politicized, Sabroski reported.
Whistleblower advocates noted that Albury’s leaks began in February 2016, when the bureau was led by Director James Comey, and continued until August 2017, when FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s three-month stint as acting director ended.
She began by recounting a debate with the president on his planned remarks before the UN General Assembly in September 2017. When she learned that Trump planned to denigrate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,” she said she urged him to remove the line.
“I told the president, ‘This is the UN; it’s a little more formal of a setting than a campaign rally,’” Haley remembered, holding back laughter. But Trump insisted that he liked the ring of the insult, she said.
“So I said, ‘Okay, Mr. President, you’re the boss,’” Haley recalled. She said that during a meeting with the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, a few hours after Trump’s tirade, the African leader casually referred to Kim as “Rocket Man.” The exchange was clear proof in her mind of Trump’s masterful salesmanship.
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I said to the Russians, ‘Either you’re with North Korea, or you’re with the United States of America,’” Haley recalled. She said she went to the Chinese ambassador and raised the prospect of an American military invasion of North Korea. “My boss is kind of unpredictable, and I don’t know what he’ll do,” she said she warned her Chinese counterpart
“I tell the president, ‘I do this all the time,’” Haley assured the crowd. “And he totally gets it.”
https://harpers.org/blog/2018/10/nikki-haley-at-the-council-for-national-policy/