Zero Hedge
October 18, 2018
In the latest indication of the Trump administration’s efforts to root out alleged leakers, a senior Treasury Department official working in the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN), Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, has been charged with leaking confidential financial reports to the media concerning former Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, according to The Hill.
Prosecutors say that Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser to FinCEN, photographed what are called suspicious activity reports, or SARs, and other sensitive government files and sent them to an unnamed reporter, in violation of U.S. law. –The Hill
Suspicious Activity Reports are filed by banks in order to confidentially notify law enforcement of potentially illegal financial transactions. The documents leaked by the Treasury official, which began last October, are reported to have been used as the basis for 12 news articles published by an unnamed organization.
While the news organization was not named in the complaint, it lists the headlines and other details of six BuzzFeed articles published between October 2017 to as recently as Monday which they allege were based on the leaks.
BuzzFeed reporters Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier are commonly listed on several of the articles referenced in the government’s complaint. (examples here, here and here).
Edwards has been charged with one count of unauthorized disclosures of SAR reports and one count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclousres of SARs. She will be tried in the Southern District of New York, and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted on both charges.
When she was arrested, Edwards was in possession of a flash drive which was allegedly used to save the unlawfully disclosed SARs, as well as a cell phone “containing numerous communications over an encrypted application…