Lawyers deny spy suspect discussed fleeing to evade arrest

By ERIC TUCKER
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for a Maryland woman charged along with her husband in a scheme to sell Navy submarine secrets to a foreign government are pushing back on prosecutors’ arguments that she was motivated to leave the United States because she was afraid of getting caught. The attorneys for Diana Toebbe are citing newly disclosed messages that they say show that she and her husband, Jonathan Toebbe, were contemplating fleeing the U.S. in 2019 because of a mutual contempt for then-President Donald Trump. Prosecutors had cited some of the messages at an October hearing in arguing that the Toebbes were a flight risk.