A federal judge Tuesday sentenced Candace Marie Claiborne, a former employee of the U.S. Department of State, to three years and four months in prison for conspiring with Chinese agents, according to authorities.
Claiborne was fined of $40,000 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S, by lying to law enforcement and background investigators and hiding her extensive contacts with, and gifts from, agents of the People’s Republic of China, in exchange for providing them with internal documents from the U.S. State Department, according to officials.
“Chinese intelligence agents convinced Candace Marie Claiborne to trade her integrity and confidential information of the United States government for cash and other gifts for herself and her family,” said Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers. “Claiborne withheld information and lied repeatedly about these foreign intelligence contacts. Violations of the public’s trust are an affront to our citizens and to all those who honor their oaths. With this sentencing, justice has been imposed for these dishonorable criminal acts.”
Claiborne, of Washington, D.C., plead guilty in April 2019, in federal court to a charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
According to the plea documents, Claiborne began working as an Office Management Specialist for the Department of State in 1999.
She has served overseas at a number of posts, including embassies and consulates in Baghdad, Iraq, Khartoum, Sudan, and Beijing and Shanghai, China.
As a condition of her employment, Claiborne maintained a Top Secret security clearance. Claiborne also was required to report any contacts with persons suspected of affiliation with a foreign intelligence agency.
Despite such a requirement, Claiborne failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), even though these agents provided tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits to Claiborne and her family over five years.
The gifts and benefits included cash wired to Claiborne’s USAA account, Chinese New Year’s gifts, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment, and a monthly stipend.
Some of these gifts and benefits were provided directly to Claiborne, while others were provided through a co-conspirator.
In exchange for these gifts and benefits, Claiborne provided copies of internal documents from the Department of State on topics ranging from economics to visits by dignitaries between the two countries.
Claiborne noted in her journal that she could “Generate 20k in 1 year” working with one of the PRC agents, who tasked her with providing internal U.S. Government analyses on a U.S.-Sino Strategic Economic Dialogue that had just concluded.
Claiborne, who confided to a co-conspirator that the PRC agents were “spies,” willfully misled State Department background investigators and FBI investigators about her contacts with those agents, the plea documents state. After the State Department and FBI investigators contacted her, Claiborne also instructed her co-conspirators to delete evidence connecting her to the PRC agents.
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The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office.
It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Thomas A. Gillice John L. Hill for the District of Columbia, and Deputy Chief Julie A. Edelstein and Trial Attorney Evan Turgeon of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section.