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WASHINGTON – A former Senate Intelligence Committee advisor pleaded guilty on Monday for lying to F.B.I. about his contacts with an unidentified journalist during an investigation into leaked classified information related to the coverage of Russia's interference in the 2016 elections.
Former associate James A. Wolfe, 57, has agreed to plead guilty, without trial, under false misrepresentation to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents during an interview in December, when he categorically denied contacts with various journalists whose articles were under review in the leak investigation.
In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop two more counts of false reporting and to recommend a minimum of offenses under which the federal sentencing guidelines provide for a sentence of zero to six months of imprisonment. # 39; imprisonment. The sentencing hearing before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is scheduled for December 20.
Even if he avoided imprisonment, it was a serious fall of grace for Mr. Wolfe who, as security director of the Senate Intelligence Committee, was responsible for receiving and managing classified information provided to the committee. oversight by the executive branch for 28 years. years.
His arrest in June revealed that he had had a relationship for over three years with Ali Watkins, a New York Times journalist who was working for Buzzfeed News and Politico at the time. But her guilty plea on Monday did not concern Mrs. Watkins; it's rather a charge that he had falsely denied any contact with a different reporter, who was not named.
In a Monday statement, prosecutors said that if they had been tried, they would have presented evidence about Mr. Wolfe's relationship with Ms. Watkins, but they did not say they had evidence that he provided classified information.
"We've seen a lot of misinformation on social media and other facts about it," they said. "So again today we're underlining that Jim has never been charged with compromising classified information, and that accusation is not part of the case today. Jim accepted responsibility for his actions and chose to resolve this issue now so that he and his family could progress in life. "
The charge for which Mr Wolfe pleaded guilty was taken following the thorough examination by F.B.I. an October 2017 article – apparently from a NBC News reporter – revealing that the Senate Intelligence Committee had issued a subpoena to Carter Page, who later became a foreign policy advisor of the campaign Trump. This fact was "unclassified, but otherwise not publicly available," according to a document filed Monday by the court and which Mr. Wolfe acknowledged the accuracy.
Mark Kornblau, a spokesman for NBC News, declined to comment.
A court record stated that Mr. Wolfe had used the encrypted messaging signal application to inform the unidentified reporter that he had submitted a subpoena to Mr. Page, and then to provide him with contact information. from the latter, then inform him of the latter's coming. for his testimony.
In an interview with F.B.I. Officers in December, Mr. Wolfe first denied having had personal or professional contacts with the anonymous journalist who had written about the subpoena, with Ms. Watkins or with a third reporter, who did not have any personal or professional contacts has not been appointed.
The F.B.I. the investigation apparently began after the publication in an April 2017 article of BuzzFeed News, according to which the office thought that Russian spies had tried to recruit Mr. Page in 2013. The fact that Russian spies had attempted to recruit someone had already been revealed in court documents, but the identity of their target was not public information.
This article was written by Ms. Watkins, who denied that Mr. Wolfe revealed secrets to his government during their relationship.
At the beginning of the year, a few months before Mr. Wolfe's arrest, the government informed Ms. Watkins that he had assigned her communications records, but she did not discuss them with the Times at that time. the. The newspaper's management opened a magazine and finally transferred it from its Washington office to the subway office in New York.
It also appeared that a border patrol officer, Jeffrey Rambo, had obtained confidential travel records from Ms. Watkins and Mr. Wolfe and that in June 2017 sought to recruit her as an informant against leaks. The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security opened an investigation to determine whether he had used government data in an abusive or illegal manner.
A spokeswoman for the inspector general's office did not answer a call on Monday. Mark MacDougal, Ms. Watkins' lawyer, said he hoped the plea agreement "does not mean that Jeff Rambo's investigation will simply go away."
"If he was really using government information to try to shake up a journalist," MacDougal said, "it should be bothering everyone."
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