{"id":26223,"date":"2019-04-26T08:51:49","date_gmt":"2019-04-26T13:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=26223"},"modified":"2019-04-26T08:51:49","modified_gmt":"2019-04-26T13:51:49","slug":"former-state-department-employee-pleads-guilty-to-conspiring-with-foreign-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2019\/04\/26\/former-state-department-employee-pleads-guilty-to-conspiring-with-foreign-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"Former State Department Employee Pleads Guilty to Conspiring with Foreign Agents"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Defendant Admitted Receiving Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Benefits From Two Chinese Agents in Exchange for Internal State Department Documents<\/em><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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4\/24\/19 – Candace Marie Claiborne, a former employee of the U.S. Department of State, pleaded guilty today to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, by lying to law enforcement and background investigators, and hiding her extensive contacts with, and gifts from, agents of the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC), in exchange for providing them with internal documents from the U.S. State Department.<\/p>\n

The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu of the District of Columbia, Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI\u2019s Washington Field Office and Deputy Assistant Secretary Ricardo Col\u00f3n, Domestic Operations, U.S. Department of State\u2019s Diplomatic Security Service.<\/p>\n

The plea took place before the Honorable Randolph D. Moss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.<\/p>\n

\u201cCandace Marie Claiborne traded her integrity and non-public information of the United States government in exchange for cash and other gifts from foreign agents she knew worked for the Chinese intelligence service,\u201d said Assistant Attorney General Demers.\u00a0 \u201cShe withheld information and lied repeatedly about these contacts.\u00a0 Violations of the public\u2019s trust are an affront to our citizens and to all those who honor their oaths.\u00a0 With this guilty plea we are one step closer to imposing justice for these dishonorable criminal acts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCandace Claiborne broke the public trust when she accepted gifts and money from foreign officials, and then lied about it to State Department background investigators,\u201d said U.S. Attorney Liu. \u201cThe United States will continue to seek to hold accountable those who abuse their positions of trust.\u201d\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cCandace Claiborne was entrusted with Top Secret information when she purposefully misled federal investigators about her repeated interactions with foreign contacts which violated her oath of office as a State Department employee,\u201d said Assistant Director McNamara. \u00a0\u201cThe FBI will continue to investigate individuals who fail to report foreign contacts, which is a key indicator of potential insider threats posed by those in positions of public trust.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur close working relationship with the FBI and the Department of Justice resulted in the conviction of Candace Claiborne who violated the public trust and damaged our national security,\u201d said Deputy Assistant Secretary Col\u00f3n. \u00a0\u201cDiplomatic Security will continue working with our law enforcement partners to vigorously defend the interests and security of the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the plea documents, Claiborne, 63, began working as an Office Management Specialist for the Department of State in 1999. \u00a0She served overseas at a number of posts, including embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China. \u00a0As a condition of her employment, Claiborne maintained a TOP SECRET security clearance. \u00a0Claiborne also was required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency as well as any gifts she received from foreign sources over a certain amount.<\/p>\n

Despite such a requirement, Claiborne failed to report repeated contacts with two agents of the People\u2019s Republic of China Intelligence Service, even though these agents provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years. \u00a0The gifts and benefits included cash wired to Claiborne\u2019s USAA account, Chinese New Year\u2019s gifts, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, a monthly stipend and numerous cash payments. \u00a0Some of these gifts and benefits were provided directly to Claiborne, while others were provided to a close family member of Claiborne\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In exchange for these gifts and benefits, as stated in the plea documents, Claiborne provided copies of internal documents from the State Department on topics ranging from U.S. economic strategies to visits by dignitaries between the two countries.<\/p>\n

Claiborne noted in her journal that she could \u201cGenerate 20k in 1 year\u201d working with one of the PRC agents.\u00a0 That same agent at one point tasked her with providing internal U.S. Government analyses on a U.S.-Sino Strategic Economic Dialogue that had just concluded.<\/p>\n

Claiborne, who confided to a co-conspirator that the PRC agents were \u201cspies,\u201d willfully misled State Department background investigators and FBI investigators about her contacts with those agents, the plea documents state.\u00a0 After the State Department and FBI investigators contacted her, Claiborne also instructed her co-conspirators to delete evidence connecting her to the PRC agents.\u00a0 She was arrested on March 28, 2017, following a law enforcement investigation.<\/p>\n

Judge Moss scheduled sentencing for July 9, 2019. \u00a0Claiborne, of Washington, D.C., was ordered detained pending sentencing, but will self-surrender for said detention on June 5, 2019.\u00a0 The statutory maximum penalty for a person convicted of conspiracy to defraud the United States is five years in prison. \u00a0The maximum statutory sentences are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes. \u00a0The sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the court after considering the advisory Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.<\/p>\n

The FBI\u2019s Washington Field Office is leading the investigation into this matter.\u00a0 The case was prosecuted by Thomas A. Gillice and investigated by John L. Hill, both Assistant U.S. Attorneys in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the District of Columbia, and Deputy Chief Julie A. Edelstein and Trial Attorney Evan N. Turgeon of the National Security Division\u2019s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defendant Admitted Receiving Tens of Thousands of Dollars in Benefits From Two Chinese Agents in Exchange for Internal State Department Documents 4\/24\/19 – Candace Marie Claiborne, a former employee of the U.S. Department of State, pleaded guilty today to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States, by lying to law enforcement and background […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-section","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26224,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26223\/revisions\/26224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}