Submarine spy case couple wanted to leave US out of contempt for Donald Trump, not to flee arrest, lawyer says
- Prosecutors called Diana Toebbe a flight risk, citing a message to her husband saying she thought they would be ‘welcomed and rewarded’ by a foreign government
- She and spouse Jonathan Toebbe, a Navy engineer, face espionage charges for allegedly attempting to sell US submarine secrets
Lawyers for a Maryland woman charged along with her husband in a scheme to sell Navy submarine secrets to a foreign government denied on Wednesday that she had contemplated fleeing the United States to avoid arrest. Instead, they said, contempt for then President Donald Trump was behind the couple’s emigration plans.
Prosecutors at an October hearing had cited messages exchanged by the couple – including one in which Diana Toebbe wrote, “I cannot believe that the two of us wouldn’t be welcomed and rewarded by a foreign govt” – in arguing that the Toebbes had been discussing escaping the US before their arrest and were therefore a flight risk if released from custody now.
But Toebbe’s defence lawyers say additional messages produced by prosecutors since then make clear that she and her husband were looking to leave the country simply because they were dismayed by Trump.
“Obviously, the additional messages paint an entirely different picture as to why Mrs Toebbe wanted to leave the country,” wrote Barry Beck, one of her lawyers. “Rather than scheming to escape capture and prosecution for crimes, Mrs Toebbe was clearly motivated to leave the country for political reasons.”
The Toebbes, of Annapolis, Maryland, have been in jail since their October arrest on espionage-related charges.
Jonathan Toebbe, a Navy engineer, is accused of passing on design information about sophisticated Virginia-class submarines to someone he thought was a representative of a foreign government but who was actually an undercover FBI agent.