CIA Employee Pleads Not Guilty to Leaking ‘Vault 7’ Data

MANHATTAN (CN) – A former CIA employee accused of leaking the agency’s hacking tools to WikiLeaks pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon at a brief arraignment.

“Not guilty,” Joshua Adam Schulte said.

Those two words marked the entirety of the 29-year-old’s response to the 10 new charges flung at him Monday night in connection to the 2017 document dump that WikiLeaks had dubbed “Vault 7,” which revealed the agency’s abilities to hack Apple and Android cellphones.

Schulte has been jailed for the last six months, not on Espionage Act violations but on charges that he received and possessed child pornography.

Though those charges were filed back in August, Schulte lost his bail this past December pursuant to sexual-assault charges in Loudon County, Virginia.

U.S. District Judge Paul Crotty asked Schulte’s defense team Wednesday if they plan to transfer the case to the Eastern District of Virginia, whose jurisdiction stretches over the agency’s headquarters at Langley.

“Venue is not proper on the first seven counts,” Schulte’s attorney Sabrina Shroff told reporters after the hearing, referring to the charges that Schulte accessed, stole and transmitted national-defense or classified information.

Schulte also faces three counts related to child pornography and another three counts involving false statements, obstructing justice and copyright infringement.

Judge Crotty set a follow-up hearing for Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.

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