A former longtime staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee was arrested Thursday after being indicted on three felony counts of making false statements to the FBI in the course of an investigation into leaks of classified information.
James A. Wolfe, 58, who served as the panel’s security director for about 30 years, was accused of lying to FBI investigators about his contacts with four journalists and about whether he had provided confidential committee information to them.
The indictment does not name the journalists, but the New York Times said in a story published just before Wolfe’s arrest was officially confirmed Thursday that the Justice Department had informed one of its national security reporters, Ali Watkins, that records relating to her emails and phone calls had been seized by the government. No prior notice of the seizure was given, the newspaper said.
Wolfe, according to the indictment, was accused of lying when he denied leaking to Watkins in connection with an article she wrote for a previous employer, BuzzFeed News, in April 2017 identifying former Donald Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as the target of a Russian espionage operation in New York. Executive branch officials had provided confirmation of that fact to the Senate Intelligence panel about two weeks earlier, the indictment says.
During Wolfe’s FBI interview in December, Wolfe denied sharing non-public information with reporters and said he was not in regular electronic communication with any journalist, the indictment says. However, after FBI agents confronted him with photos of him and Watkins, he admitted lying and acknowledged a personal relationship with her, the charges say. Still, Wolfe denied divulging any confidential information, the indictment says. – READ MORE
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