News broke late
Thursday evening that a former Democrat staffer
on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) is expected to be
indicted for making false statements to special agents of the FBI during the
course of an investigation into the unlawful disclosure of classified information
to reporters.
Wolfe had worked under leadership of both parties since
1987, before abruptly departing the Senate panel at the end of 2017.
Over the past year, as
the Committee's Russia inquiry heated up, Wolfe was responsible for escorting
high-profile witnesses into the committee's secure spaces (SCIF), including
Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.
The Justice Department alleges
that, as SSCI Director of Security, Wolfe “was entrusted with access to
classified SECRET and TOP SECRET information provided by the Executive Branch,
including the U.S. Intelligence Community, to the SSCI. In this position, Wolfe
was responsible for safeguarding all classified information in the possession
of the SSCI.”
Wolfe had a romantic
relationship with New York Times reporter Ali Watkins. Watkins also worked for BuzzFeed and Politico
during her three-year-long relationship with Wolfe.
They
exchanged tens of thousands of text messages.
According
to the indictment, “Despite WOLFE’s statements, WOLFE had, in truth,
engaged in extensive contact with multiple reporters, including conveying to at
least two reporters information about MALE-1. WOLFE used his personal cell
phone, his SSCI-issued electronic mail account and anonymizing messaging
applications, including Signal and WhatsApp, to exchange electronic communications
with reporters.”
According to the New
York Times, Mr. Wolfe’s case led to the first known instance of the Justice
Department going after a reporter’s data under President Trump. The seizure
suggested that prosecutors under the Trump Administration will continue the aggressive tactics employed under President Barack
Obama. [emphasis mine]
The Obama Administration had repeated tangles with
journalists such as James Rosen of Fox News, including secretly subpoenaing
phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors during a 2012 leak
investigation into a story about a bomb plot.
It appeared that the FBI
was investigating how Ms. Watkins learned that Russian spies in 2013 had tried
to recruit Carter Page, a former Trump foreign policy adviser. She published
an article for BuzzFeed News on April 3, 2017, about the
attempted recruitment of Mr. Page in which he confirmed the contacts.
The
Washington Times notes, “The Justice Department claims Mr.
Wolfe regularly met in secret with two of the reporters the FBI questioned
him about as well as other journalists. Those meetings were often held in
places unlikely to be discovered by others, including secluded areas of the
Hart Senate Office building, restaurants, bars and private residences,
prosecutors alleged in the indictment.”
Senate Intelligence
Committee Chairman Richard Burr and ranking member, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), said in a joint statement: “While the charges do not appear
to include anything related to the mishandling of classified information, the
committee takes this matter extremely seriously. We were made aware of the
investigation late last year, and have fully cooperated with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation and the Department of Justice since then.”
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) June 8, 2018
Now all President Trump has to do is threaten to arrest Ali Watkins’ parents and he’ll have done about the same as Obama— Sean Spicier (@sean_spicier) June 8, 2018
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