(John Ransom, Headline USA) A naval engineer and his teacher wife, both identified as Trump haters, face long prison sentences after they allegedly approached Brazil to try to sell nuclear secrets to the US ally, which promptly ratted the couple out, according to the New York Times.
Jonathan and Diana Toebbe, who the Gateway Pundit said sported a Black Lives Matter sign in their yard, decided to plead guilty last month rather than face trial.
Something kinda sad about the Jonathan Toebbe case: he wouldn’t sell #nuclear secrets to America’s enemies, so settled on #Brazil; might never have gone through with it unless his overtly amoral wife, Diana, pushed him; and rightly suspected an FBI trap. https://t.co/FJudJo3WzZ
— Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) March 15, 2022
The couple was described by a local Colorado CBS affiliate as “educators.” Jonathan Toebbe had an engineering degree from the prestigious Colorado School of Mines and worked on nuclear submarines for the US, while his wife Diana worked at the expensive, Denver-area the Kent Denver School, a private boarding institution that charges tuition of $34,648 for the 2021-22 school year.
The couple decided to approach Brazil because it was a United States ally and they felt it was morally defensible, as opposed to selling secrets to countries like Iran, Russia or China, said the Daily Mail. But later one of them admitted in court documents that the sale of any nuclear secrets is morally wrong.
‘”It’s not morally defensible either,” Jonathan Toebbe wrote, according to a transcript of the court proceedings quoted by the Daily Mail. “We convinced ourselves it was fine, but it really isn’t either, is it?”
To which wife Diana responded: “I have no problems at all with it. I feel no loyalty to abstractions.”
The would-be-spies, according to the New York Times, sent a letter to Brazilian military intelligence offering information about nuclear secrets, whereupon Brazil promptly turned letter over to the FBI.
Then throughout 2021 the husband made dead-drops of secret information at locations, while his wife acted as a lookout, to whom they thought were Brazilian agents, but we’re actually FBI counter intelligence officials who were building a case against them, said CBS News.
Diana Toebbe argued in court last month that despite being described as a flight risk, her communications about trying to flee the country had nothing to do with spying but were an expression of her extreme distaste for former President Donald Trump.
“Rather than scheming to escape capture and prosecution for crimes, Mrs. Toebbe was clearly motivated to leave the country for political reasons,” her legal team said in court documents.
“Specifically, the additional messages show that Mrs. Toebbe, like many politically left-leaning individuals at the time, was intensely upset with the direction of the country under the former president,”
No evidence yet suggests that any of the $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency the Toebbes were paid by the FBI made its way into the BLM coffers.
