A former U.S. Army sergeant has been sentenced to four years in federal prison after admitting to trying to pass highly sensitive military information to the Chinese government — a stark reminder of the growing national security threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Joseph Daniel Schmidt, 31, pleaded guilty to two felony charges for offering classified information and providing a device capable of accessing secure military computer networks. The Justice Department confirmed that Schmidt used his clearance to gather sensitive defense intelligence while serving in the Army.
Schmidt served on active duty from 2015 to 2020 with the 109th Military Intelligence Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. After leaving the Army in January 2020, he allegedly reached out to the Chinese Consulate in Turkey and to Chinese security officials, offering U.S. defense information.
According to prosecutors, Schmidt traveled to Hong Kong in March 2020 and began producing documents that exposed “high level secrets” of America’s military systems. He later obtained a work visa in China and lived there for three years before returning to the U.S., where federal agents arrested him upon arrival in San Francisco in October 2023.
“As a retired Army officer, I find it unconscionable for a former soldier to put his colleagues and country at risk by peddling secret information and intelligence access to a hostile foreign power,” said U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd in a Justice Department statement. “These cases remain a priority for our office to keep our country safe.”
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Why wasn’t Joseph Schmidt sentenced to death for treason?
He should have receiver a lot more than 4 years for helping the CCP !
Four Years? (Did say more, but they’ve been censoring me lately)