Authorities have arrested senior Treasury Department official Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards for allegedly leaking to BuzzFeed News confidential financial documents related to subjects of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
CNN:
Edwards, 40, a senior adviser in the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as "FinCEN," was arrested and charged by the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York with one count of unauthorized disclosure of Suspicious Activity Reports and one count of conspiracy to make such unauthorized disclosures.
The reports contained financial information about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his former business partner Richard Gates, accused Russian spy Maria Butina, the Russian Embassy, and Prevezon, a Russian-owned company accused by the U.S. of money laundering.
CNN:
[Edwards] appeared in federal court in Virginia on Wednesday, where a judge released her into the custody of her parents on a $100,000 personal recognizance bond. The judge prohibited her from having any contact with an unnamed co-conspirator at FinCEN who is referenced in the complaint or with the reporter to whom she is accused of leaking the material.
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The investigation into the leaked reports came after federal agents identified a pattern of financial information from people or entities under investigation by various federal prosecutors' offices, including that of special counsel Robert Mueller, appearing in news reports.
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For a year, between October 2017 and this month, Edwards used an encrypted application to send electronic images or descriptions of the documents to a reporter, according to the indictment, at times exchanging a large volume of messages. On August 2, 2018, for example, Edwards and the reporter exchanged 541 messages, the indictment says.
In her effort to transmit the material to the reporter, Edwards saved the reports and other sensitive information to a FinCEN-provided flash drive, then took photographs of the documents and texted them over, the complaint says. She also sent the reporter internal government emails related to the reports as well as other non-public material, including investigative memos, according to the complaint.
BuzzFeed's reporting contained detailed information drawn from Suspicious Activity Reports. A story in October 2017, for example, said the news organization "has learned specific details about 13 of the wire transfers" related to Manafort, and included details about where the transfers originated. The BuzzFeed story said the transfers were "flagged" by US financial institutions.
The stories Edwards served as a source for spanned a year, with the most recent one published on Monday, FBI Special Agent Emily Eckstut wrote in the complaint. Two of the articles came out last month and discussed bank transactions related to Russian businessman Emin Agalarov, who is believed to have arranged a June 2016 meeting between Russians and Trump campaign officials that has long been a focus of suspicion and of Mueller's probe.
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The charges against Edwards appear to be the first criminal case where a government employee is accused of releasing information believed to be a focus of Mueller's inquiry relating to the Trump campaign.
However, National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner was arrested in June 2017 and charged with leaking a top-secret report on Russian efforts to hack systems run by state election officials. That effort is also being probed by Mueller's investigators but it's unclear whether that particular wave of Russian activity was connected in any way to the Trump campaign.
Winner pleaded guilty to one felony charge of leaking classified information and was sentenced in August to more than 5 years in prison.
In addition, in June of this year, Senate Intelligence Committee staffer James Wolfe was charged with three counts of lying in the course of a leak investigation. On Monday, he pleaded guilty to one of those felony charges as part of a plea deal.
CNN:
On Wednesday, the judge in Virginia said Edwards's next court appearance will be in New York, prior to November 2.
Senior FinCen Employee Arrested And Charged With Unlawfully Disclosing SARs (press release)
Treasury Department Employee Arrested for Allegedly Leaking Information on Robert Mueller’s Top Targets (Daily Beast)
Treasury official charged with leaking docs related to Russia, Manafort (CNN)
Treasury employee charged with leaks to BuzzFeed about Trump advisers (Politico)