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A US treasury department official has been arrested and charged with leaking information relating to the Trump-Russia investigation to a journalist.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards is accused of disclosing reports over the past year on suspicious financial activity by figures including Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.
Federal prosecutors alleged that the leaks were used for a series of reports published by BuzzFeed News titled The Money Trail, which has revealed details of numerous money transfers flagged as suspicious to treasury investigators.
Edwards, a senior adviser at the treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network, has been charged with unlawfully disclosing suspicious activity reports and conspiring to do so. She was due to appear in a court in Virginia on Wednesday afternoon.
She allegedly admitted to FBI agents that she gave the reports to the journalist, but said she was acting as a whistleblower. Investigators said she had previously filed an unrelated whistleblower complaint and discussed this with congressional officials.
Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in Manhattan, said Edwards had “betrayed her position of trust”. Berman said the charges showed unauthorised leaks “will not be tolerated and will be met with swift justice” by the government.
In an 18-page criminal complaint, prosecutors said that Edwards, 40, saved suspicious activity reports to a flash drive and sent photographs of them to an unidentified reporter over an encrypted messaging application.
As well as Manafort, the reports allegedly leaked by Edwards included information on Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, and Maria Butina, the alleged Russian spy. Another report related to money transfers by Russia’s embassy in Washington.
Authorities said that Edwards’s cellphone activity was monitored after investigators obtained permission from a judge. The complaint suggested they were able to see she was messaging the reporter despite their use of the encrypted app, which was not identified.
Prosecutors said that when Edwards was arrested, she was found to be carrying the flash drive and a cellphone containing “numerous communications” between her and the reporter on the encrypted messaging app.
A spokeswoman for BuzzFeed said: “We have no comment at this time.”
(THE GUARDIAN)
