Daily FGS
Ex Army Sergeant Gets Prison for Trying to Feed China U.S. Secrets
Story by Guy D. McCardle
A federal judge in Seattle sentenced former Army sergeant Joseph Daniel Schmidt to four years in prison and three years of supervised release for trying to hand national defense information to the People’s Republic of China. Schmidt pleaded guilty in June to two felonies under 18 U.S.C. 793: attempting to deliver national defense information and retaining national defense information. Judge John C. Coughenour called the crimes serious and weighed Schmidt’s mental health when setting the punishment.Schmidt served on active duty from 2015 to 2020 at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington with the 109th Military Intelligence Battalion. Court records identify him as a team leader in the human intelligence section supporting I Corps in the Indo-Pacific. In that role, he held access to Secret and Top Secret material. He also studied Mandarin and traveled to China while in uniform.
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He made the choice, now he lives it for the rest of his life.
I cannot trust a man to control others who cannot control himself.
Robert E. Lee
Category: Feel Good Stories
I saw this report first thing this morning. I hope he enjoys his sentence.
In other news, I’m pretty certain a former Soldier of mine got hemmed up in a court martial at Benning a couple of months back. He was in my platoon during my abbreviated second tour in TOG, a PFC/SPC on the Colors Team who had aspirations of doing a bit more than some. When I last saw him, he’d graduated Ranger School and was a CPL about to be promoted to SGT.
Anyway, I thought about him last week and looked him up. Little social media outside of a neglected X account, but one of the top search results was a court martial outcome for a 28-yo SSG convicted of stealing explosives. Same name (not uncommon, but not exactly common either), and seems about the right age. I can’t find anything else. Could be as simple as he was a Ranger Instructor who made off with a grenade sim, or something along those lines.
Regardless, reduction to E-1, Bad Conduct Discharge, and six months confinement. I hope it isn’t the promising young Soldier I knew, but have a feeling it is.
General Robert E. Lee was very wise. His Memoirs are worth the read, and the collection of his letters published by his son is as well.
As for former Army sergeant Joseph Daniel Schmidt:
Schmidt is a disgrace to the uniform. He has Schmidt all over his honor, his name, his country, and is in deep Schmidt now.
Personally, I think four years is too light a sentence. YMMV
Deep Schmidt. Love it!
He’s up Schmidt creek without a paddle.
Hopefully he’ll be getting his Schmidt pushed in courtesy of his soon-to-be friends at Leavenworth.
The BJTD deli will be serving him their legendary tube steak on a regular basis
Karma is a bitch, and so is life after receiving time in the USDB at Fort Leavenworth with life having a DD. He’ll have the rest of his life to live with the consequences of betraying his Country. As a past Mentor of mine would have said, “He’s in deep kimchi!”