A teacher accused of selling nuclear submarine secrets with her Navy engineer husband only wanted to flee the country because she hated Donald Trump, a court has been told.
Lawyers for Diana Toebbe, 45, claim she only wanted to exit the US because of her disdain for the former president, and not because she was worried about getting caught for allegedly trying to sell the classified information.
They made the claim in court papers filed Wednesday, complete with an exchange of messages said to have taken place between Toebbe and her husband Jonathan in March 2019.
Those texts also allegedly saw Diana Toebbe discuss fleeing to France.
The country they tried to sell the secrets to has never been mentioned, and is said to be a US ally, although officials told NBC News that France was not the country targeted.
Diana begins: 'We need to get out.' Jonathan appears bored with her statement, answering: '*sigh* where?
To do what?'
His wife then says: 'To anywhere. To do something else. To teach in international schools. To take Macron up on his offer to harbor scientific refugees.'
In an apparent attempt to calm Diana, Jonathan says: 'Biden/Warren will curb stomp Trump/Pence.'
But Diana was undeterred, and replied: 'WE NEED TO GET OUT. Hilary (sic) was going to curb stomp trump.
I'm done.'
Diana and Jonathan Toebbes are seen in their mugshots, following their arrest in Virginia in October.
A judge is currently considering her bail application
Jonathan touted then then-unpublished Mueller Report into alleged collusion between Team Trump and Russia, which ended up posing no threat to Trump's presidency.
He wrote: 'The Mueller report is coming real soon.'
But Diana remained angry, answering: 'It's been too long.
Nothing has changed. He's still in power.'
Jonathan replied: 'Nothing in government moves that fast — believe me, I speak from personal experience.'
Diana then said: '(Trump crony) Manafort got a slap on the wris
/>It's a signal that the entire system is rigged.'
The chat then turned to escaping, with Jonathan saying: 'We've got passports, and some savings. In a real pinch we can flee quickly.'
And Diana answered: 'Righ
/>Let's go sooner than later.'
The pair were arrested in October and charged with selling secret information about nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent who posed as an operative for a foreign country.
Diane Toebbe (left) and Jonathan Toebbe (right) are both accused of being involved in a plot to sell nuclear secrets to a foreign power for $100,000 in cryptocurrency
After her detention hearing, the document says, Diana Toebbe's father received a letter from her husband, saying: 'I have high hopes that Diana will ultimately be exonerated.'
Prosecutors have not yet responded to the filing.
They have argued that Diana Toebbe was deeply involved in her husband's scheme and acted as a lookout while he left classified material for a person he thought was a foreign agent.
They point out that Jonathan Toebbe also wrote in a message to the person he thought was his handler — who was actually an FBI agent— that 'there is only one other person with knowledge' of their arran
>
That person, the government alleges, was Diana Toebbe.
Prosecutors said Jonathan Toebbe, who worked on the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, mailed a package of classified information in April 2020 to representatives of a foreign country, offering to reveal many more secrets in exchange for up to $5 million in cryptocurrency.
He wrote that he was interested in selling information on Virginia-class nuclear submarine reactors.
The unidentified foreign government sat on the documents before turning them over to t
>
in December 2020, after the election.
PICTURED: Diane Toebbe, 45, and Jonathan Toebbe, 42, were charged with espionage and violation of the Atomic Energy Act after the FBI received a package from an unidentified foreign country saying it had received sensitive classified information on American nuclear submarines in December 2020, a month after President Biden was elected
Toebbe was arrested in West Virginia in October along with his wife, a teacher, after he had placed a removable memory card at a prearranged 'dead drop' in the state, according to the Justice Department.
He hid encrypted memory cards in a peanut butter sandwich, a chewing gum packet and band-aid wrapper.
Toebbe worked for 15 months in the office of the chief of naval operations, the top officer in the military's branch.
He has worked on naval nuclear propulsion since 2012, including secret technology devised to reduce the noise and vibration of submarines, factors that can give away their location.
Toebbe stated in one message that he had hoped the foreign government would be able to extract him and his family if he was ever tracked down, saying 'we have passports and cash set aside for this purpose.'
Authorities say he provided instructions for how to conduct the furtive relationship, with a letter that said: 'I apologize for this poor translation into your la
>
Please forward this letter to your military intelligence agency. I believe this information will be of great value to your nation. This is not a hoax.'
An undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of the foreign government made contact with Toebbe and agreed to pay thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency for the information he was offering.
The emails show that at first Toebbe remained wary but that he came to trust the undercover agent due to the hefty amount he was going to b
>
It was agreed he would receive $100,000 in crypto.
He was paid $70,000 before he was caught.
The FBI also arranged a 'signal' to Toebbe from the country's embassy in Washington over the Memorial Day weekend. The papers do not describe how the FBI was able to arrange such a signal.
The leaked secrets contained 'militarily sensitive design elements, operating parameters and performance characteristics of Virginia-class submarine reactors,' according to a federal court affidavit.
A bird's eye show of Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory lab, where the FBI claims is the only place where Toebbe could have obtained the classified information on US nuclear subs
In June 2021, the FBI says, the undercover agent sent $10,000 in cryptocurrency to Toebbe, describing it as a sign of good faith and trust.
Weeks later, federal agents watched as the Toebbes arrived at an agreed-upon location in West Virginia for the exchange, with Diana Toebbe appearing to serve as a lookout for her husband during a dead-drop operation for which the FBI paid $20,000, according to the complaint.
The FBI recovered a blue memory card wrapped in plastic and placed between two slices of bread on a peanut butter sandwich, court documents said.
If convicted, the couple face life in prison.
Diana's social media accounts - which often featured pictures of her dogs, her family and selfies, a far cry from her alleged life as a spy - revealed that she was unhappy with the government and her country.
A post on her on Facebook page indicated that she organized a babysitter while she and her husband made their last secret drop of stolen intelligence before they were caught by the FBI.
Other posts reveal show that she was a staunch liberal who supported 'The Resistance,' once retweeting that 'America is Temporarily Out of Order' while Trump was president.
She supported liberal ideologies, including the Black Lives Matter mo
>
Her profile picture reads 'Black Lives Matter,' and a post last year celebrating the social media protest against racism called '#blackouttuesday.'
One post she shared in 2019 is a photo from an unidentified Women's March overlaid with the quote, 'Stay angry, litt
.
You will need all your anger now,' from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
The social media posts on Diana Toebbe's Facebook account include one saying 'Women Can Stop Trump'
One retweet from the her account in 2017, just days after Trump's inauguration, shows a photo saying, 'To the rest of the world, due to an insufficient amount of moral courage, America is temporarily out of
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We hope to restore service as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we in the resistance movement join hands with those around the world who realize we are one people. May the forces of good be with us. #TheResistance.'
The accounts her Twitter profile follows are mostly 'resistance' accounts in protest of Trump, including the 'Rogue NASA' account described as 'the unofficial "Resistance" team of NASA' on itsscriptescription.
In 2016, she retweeted a post from liberal activist group MoveOn about former First Lady Michelle Obama's speech criticism of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump for his treatment of women.
One retweet in 2017, just days after Trump's inauguration, shows a picture caption:, 'To the rest of the world, due to an insufficient amount of moral courage, America is temporarily out of
>
We hope to restore service as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we in the resistance movement join hands with those around the world who realize we are one people. May the forces of good be with us. #TheResistance.'
Around the same time, she retweeted a post from self-proclaimed 'activist against Islamophobia' CJ Werleman which included a video of an Iranian-American discussing Trump's travel ban with the caption, 'Watch this video and then try to describe immigrants in dehumanizing terms such as "waves" or "floods." '
She followed up with another tweet from an account called ALT DOJ, which describes itself as the 'Resistance' Department of Justice, that included a photo of people protesting the travel ban outside then-Senator Orrin Hatch's office at the Capitol.
It's caption read: 'Scene in front of Hatch's office rig
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capitol police threatening arrests for seated protesters! #RESIST #TheResistance #MuslimBan'
One Facebook post on Diana's account said 'Women Can Stop Trump;' while other profile pictures feature failed 2016 presidential candidate Hilary Clinton's campaign symbol; a photo of the transgender flag; and various profile photos supporting the LGBTQ+ community.
Diana also retweeted an anti-trump tweet from TED Talk follower and cosmologist Katie Mack, saying the Trump administration suppressed LGBT right
One post she shared in 2019 is a photo from an unidentified Women's March with the above quote about 'staying angry'
Meanwhile, her husband appears to be a wannabe medieval swashbuckler who took sword-fighting classes and owned his own swords.
About two months after Jonathan allegedly sent a package of secret Navy information to a foreign contact, he boasted about buying a new sword to members of the Mid-Atlantic Society for Historic Swordsmanship on Facebook.
'[That feeling when] a box from Amazon and Purpleheart Armoury arrive on the same day,' Toebbe wrote on the society's Facebook page, while also posting a photo of a new sleek sword, medieval-style armor and a book titled 'The Medieval Art of Swordsmanship.'
'New sword day is always a good day,' he added in 2020.
The group's founder, Larry Tom, told the New York Post that he knew Jonathan in the 'context' of historic swordplay.
Jonathan also attended classes at the group's nearby center.
According to public Navy records, he worked for 15 months in the office of the chief of naval operations, the top officer in the military's branch.
Since 2012, Toebbe has worked for the Navy and he had high-level clearances in nuclear engineering.
Toebbe started working in the military as a civilian i
>
He was commissioned in the Navy and rose to the rank of lieutenant before moving to the Navy Rescue, which he left in December 2020 — the month the FBI established contact with him.
According to court documents, he has worked on naval nuclear propulsion since 2012, including on technology devised to reduce the noise and vibration of submarines, factors that can give away their location.
He also worked on naval reactors in Arlington, Virginia, from 2012
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He then was a student at naval reactor school in Pittsburgh before returning to Arlington to work on reactors again.
The complaint alleges violations of the Atomic Energy Act, which restricts the disclosure of information related to atomic weapons or nuclear materials.
Diana Toebbe is a humanities teacher at the Key School, a private school in Annapolis.
She has been suspended indefinitely.