Former FBI analyst who kept classified records in home sentenced to prison

Correction: Former FBI analyst Kendra Kingsbury is a resident of Kansas. The information was incorrect in an earlier version of this story.

A former intelligence analyst with the FBI’s Kansas City division has been sentenced to nearly four years in prison for holding on to classified national defense-related documents at her residence, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Thursday. 

According to a release from the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs, Kendra Kingsbury “improperly removed and willfully retained” some 386 classified documents, some of which “contained extremely sensitive national defense information,” at her home in Kansas over the course of her more than 12-year FBI tenure.

Kingsbury, 50, pleaded guilty in October to two counts of unlawfully retaining documents related to national defense. She has been sentenced to 46 months in federal prison and three years of supervised release.

Her sentencing comes weeks after former President Trump was indicted and arraigned on federal criminal charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified materials at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida after his time in the White House had ended.

The Kansas City Star reported that Kingsbury stored some of the documents in her bathroom. Trump’s indictment also detailed that documents were kept in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom, among other places.  

Kingsbury held a “TOP SECRET/SCI” security clearance, with access to national defense and classified information, and received training materials that specifically warned her “that she was prohibited from retaining classified information at her personal residence,” the DOJ said in the release. 

Among the materials were reportedly documents classified at the “SECRET” level, including details on government counterterrorism, counterintelligence and cyber efforts, as well as specific investigations and “sensitive human-source operations.”

Kingsbury was also alleged to have held on to SECRET-level documents from another government agency that included information about al Qaeda members and a suspected associate of Osama bin Laden, the release states. 

“According to court documents, Kingsbury put national security at risk by retaining classified information in her home that would have, if in the wrong hands, revealed some of the government’s most important and secretive methods of collecting essential national security intelligence.”

The FBI’s investigation into “what uses” Kingsbury had for the classified documents “revealed more questions and concerns than answers.”

—Updated at 1:52 p.m.