The man convicted of the biggest CIA leak in history says he doesn't have enough typewriter ribbon to craft his own defense for a separate child pornography trial

The CIA logo at its Langley headquarters.

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• The man convicted of the biggest leak in CIA history faces a separate federal trial in September.
• Joshua Schulte is facing child pornography charges, a case where he is representing himself.
• He and the federal government have been arguing about whether he has enough typewriter supplies for the case.

The man convicted of leaking CIA documents to WikiLeaks is sparring with the federal government over whether he has enough typewriter ribbon to put together his own defense arguments for a child pornography trial.

According to court documents first shared by CourtWatch, ex-CIA staffer and convicted leaker Joshua Schulte is set to stand trial in a separate child pornography case in September.

In court filings, Schulte — who will represent himself as he did in previous cases — has argued that he doesn't have enough typewriter ribbon to write his own defense, which the federal government isn't buying.

In a letter written by federal prosecutors to a judge overseeing Schulte's case, they argued that Schulte had misrepresented the supplies he has at his disposal at the Metropolitan Detention Center in New York.

"The letters repeat allegations and complaints that Defendant has made repeatedly in other submissions and in conferences with the Court, including: that he lacks access to paper, pens, typewriter ribbons, and stamps," prosecutors said. They added that in early June, he was supplied two reams of typing paper for his typewriter.

"Mr. Schulte should receive the additional stamps and typewriter ribbon early next week," prosecutors said.

In July 2022, Schulte, a former CIA software engineer, was convicted of nine counts by a federal jury, including violating the Espionage Act. The charges related to his 2017 leak of CIA secrets around the US government's hacking and spying on foreign governments and terrorist groups to Wikileaks, according to The New York Times.

The re-trial came after Schulte was initially found guilty on two of ten counts in an earlier trial, with jurors hung on eight counts. In 2017, after receiving Schulte's dispatch, Wikileaks published the information, titled "Vault 7," per Law and Crime.

Federal prosecutors alleged that as Schulte represented himself in those cases, he stored up to 2,400 images of "likely" child pornography on the laptop he used while detained, Law and Crime reported. 

In the latest court filing, prosecutors said his requests for more materials threaten to delay his new September trial. At the time of his last trial, former high school classmates of Schulte described him drawing swastikas and flashing his genitals to others regularly.

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