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Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was the primary target of a Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSIC) staffer indicted for lying about his contacts with reporters, according to an indictment released on Thursday. James Wolfe, the former director of security for the SSIC panel, was in contact with at least three reporters at around the time they published articles about Page, an energy consultant who is a central player in the investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government. Wolfe, 57, is charged with lying to the FBI during a Dec. 15, 2017 interview about whether he...

A former staffer on the Senate intelligence committee has been indicted in a leak investigation that resulted in the seizure of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records. According to a Justice Department statement, James A. Wolfe has been indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about his contact with reporters. Mr. Wolfe, the Senate panel’s former director of security, was indicted by a grand jury on three counts, NBC reported Thursday evening.

The former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee had been in three-year relationship with a New York Times reporter. WASHINGTON — A longtime staffer for the Senate Intelligence Committee has been arrested on charges of lying to investigators probing the potential leaking of classified information, the Justice Department announced Thursday night. A federal grand jury indicted the staffer, James A. Wolfe, 58, on three counts of making false statements in December about contacts with reporters, including providing sensitive information related to the work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which he served as security director for 29 years. He was...

There is no question in my mind that the Department of Justice was absolutely justified in looking into reporter, Ali Watkins’s electronic records. Why do I say this? Due to her intimate relationship with government official James Wolfe, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Director of Security from May 1987 to December 2017, her records became a matter of National Security. The fact that Wolfe lied to the FBI proves this. James Wolfe’s first allegiance was to the United States. He took an oath to safeguard classified and top secret material. On a daily basis he had access to the most...

The indictment of James Wolfe, 58, former security director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), has sent shockwaves around Washington. Wolfe faces three counts of violating 18 U.S.C. 1001, for making false statements to criminal investigators, and could easily face serious jail time if convicted. After a year of leaks cascading down Capitol Hill, Wolfe is a cautionary tale for many members, staffers and journalists. Yet, one person should be especially discomforted by the indictment: former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe The Wolfe indictment shows the Justice Department has been actively pursuing leaks out of Congress. Given...

<p>Ali Watkins worked for Buzzfeed as the National Security Reporter from Nov 2015 to May 2017. During this time, the Russian Dossier was released. You can check her linkedin for this information.</p> <p>Dossier paid for with campaign funds from the clinton campaign and DNC.</p>

New York Times reporter Ali Watkins' past tweets are raising eyebrows after revelations she had a three-year romantic relationship with a Senate Intelligence Committee aide now accused by federal prosecutors of leaking sensitive information to journalists, including herself. (Snip) In an April 2013 tweet, Watkins also tweeted about the fictional Netflix television show “House of Cards,” where a young reporter has an affair with an older member of Congress. “I wanted to be Zoe Barnes...until episode 4,” she tweeted. “Sleeping with your source- especially a vindictive congressman? #badlifechoice #HouseofCards”

Editors at BuzzFeed were reportedly aware that one of their reporters engaged in a years-long romantic relationship with one of her top sources, the former director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee who was indicted and arrested Thursday night for lying to FBI agents. According to the Daily Caller, Ali Watkins, employed as a national security reporter by BuzzFeed from November 2015 to May 2017, informed her superiors of her relationship with James Wolfe, yet none of her stories ever made note of the serious conflict of interest inherent in her covering the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Federal investigators seized the records of New York Times reporter Ali Watkins in relation to an investigation of leaks out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the Times reported Thursday night. (snip) Not only did it turn out to be the committee doing the leaking, Watkins knew the person doing the leaking on an intimate level.

Shortened title. Full tile: Breaking: Feinstein’s Former Intel Staffer Daniel Jones is Also Connected to NY Times Reporter in Leak Investigation Former Senate Intel Committee aide, James A. Wolfe, 57, was arrested on Thursday after the DOJ conducted an investigation into classified information leaks to reporters.

uestions remain over whether BuzzFeed News acted ethically with a former employee, Ali Watkins, who had a romantic relationship with an indicted former security director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Watkins told her BuzzFeed editors about her relationship with the individual, James Wolfe, who the Department of Justice has charged with lying to investigators during a leak probe, according to The New York Times, where Watkins now works as a national security reporter. BuzzFeed Editor-In-Chief Ben Smith said he would “not comment at all on a reporter’s sources in the middle of an unjustifiable leak hunt” when The...

Washington (AFP) - Media watchdog groups expressed alarm Friday over the seizing of a journalist's records as part of a probe into intelligence leaks resulting in the indictment of a congressional staffer. The Justice Department late Thursday announced the indictment of James Wolfe, 58, on three counts of making false statements about his contacts with three reporters. As part of the probe, the Justice Department seized years of records related to two email accounts and a phone number belonging to New York Times reporter Ali Watkins, the newspaper reported. The seizing of records raises constitutional concerns about press freedom, activists...

A mysterious move by the Senate Wednesday night is part of a Justice Department inquiry into a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide who may have leaked classified information. The Senate unanimously approved a resolution allowing the committee to provide records to the Justice Department in response to a request related to the investigation. The aide's identity and the lawmaker for whom he or she worked is not clear, but on Thursday, The New York Times published an article saying that federal investigators had seized years' worth of email and phone records relating to one of its reporters, Ali Watkins.Watkins previously...

Senior Justice Department officials announced late Thursday criminal charges against Senate Intelligence Committee’s long-time director of security James Wolfe. The indictment charges Wolfe with making false statements to the FBI and details how Wolfe passed classified information, including presumably information related to one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page, to a series of media outlets, confirming long-standing suspicions of the career intelligence community’s complicity in leaks. The three-count indictment charges Wolfe with separate instances of making false statements to the FBI, not directly charging him for leaking classified information, but appearing to detail how he did allegedly leaked classified information to...

Former CIA chief John Brennan is a liar. And he’s not the kind of garden variety dissembler that we see in Washington all the time, either. Rather, Brennan is the kind of man who feels comfortable brazenly misleading the American people about an attack on democracy, and then shamelessly lecturing them about civic decency. You may recall, as director of the CIA, Brennan oversaw an operation of illegal spying on a staffer of the legislative branch of the United States government. At least five agency officials under his watch broke into Senate computer files, viewing drafts of a report on...

A former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has been indicted and arrested on charges of making false statements to the FBI during an investigation into the leak of classified information, the Justice Department announced Thursday. As part of the investigation, law enforcement officials seized years worth of phone and email records of a New York Times reporter, Ali Watkins, who had previously been in a romantic relationship with the staffer, the newspaper reported Thursday evening. The Senate staffer, James A. Wolfe, was indicted on three counts of making false statements while he served as the committee’s director of...

The Department of Justice reportedly seized a New York Times reporter's phone and email records this year in an effort to probe the leaking of classified information, the first known instance of the DOJ going after a journalist's data under President Trump. The Times reported Thursday that the DOJ seized years' worth of records from journalist Ali Watkins's time as a reporter at BuzzFeed News and Politico before she joined The Times in 2017 as a federal law enforcement reporter, according to the report Thursday. Watkins was alerted by a prosecutor in February that the DOJ had years of records...