A former aide to the Senate Intelligence Committee, who leaked information to a journalist he was having an affair with, has been sentenced to two months in prison for lying to the FBI.
James Wolfe, 58, pleaded guilty in October to one felony count of lying to the FBI. The count referenced use of encrypted messaging in October 2017 to tell “Reporter #3” about a subpoena the committee had issued.
Wolfe, who was the Senate Intelligence Committee’s director of security for three decades, also admitted to lying about speaking with three other reporters. However, as part of his plea deal, he only pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with “Reporter #3.”
Wolfe, who was originally indicted on June 7, did not admit to leaking classified information. He did, however, acknowledge discussing unclassified but nonpublic information with reporters in violation of committee rules.
All reporters were unnamed in court filings, but context revealed in the indictment that one journalist — “Reporter #2” — was Ali Watkins of the New York Times.
Watkins and Wolfe had been in a relationship, and both saw their email and phone records subpoenaed and seized by the Justice Department.
Following two months of incarceration, Wolfe will be under four months of supervised released. He also faces a $7,500 fine. He was sentenced late Thursday by U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in federal court in Washington.
He had faced a possible sentencing range of zero to six months.
Federal prosecutors had asked two years imprisonment, telling the court: “The FBI and other stakeholders were forced to devote significant time and resources to investigate and assess whether damage to the national security had been done.”
Wolfe misled the FBI in December 2017 when they were investigating leaks to the media about the Senate Intelligence Committee. The FBI opened their investigation in April 2017 after several leaked news stories, including one about the opening of a surveillance warrant against former aide to the Trump campaign Carter Page.
In one recent court filing, prosecutors had accused Wolfe of sharing sensitive information with “multiple young, female reporters.”
When asked by the FBI if he had any relationships with any of the reporters, Wolfe originally denied the allegations. But he was confronted with photographs of himself and Watkins and eventually acknowledged he had a relationship with her for years.
Watkins previously worked for BuzzFeed News, where she broke stories about Page.
Those stories included the committee’s subpoena of Page, as well as details about his interactions with the committee.
Though federal prosecutors never charged him with leaking classified information or produced evidence he leaked classified information, court documents show he briefed Watkins and other reporters about the subpoena.
“I lied,” Wolfe said in court on Thursday. “To protect my wife, my sons, and selfishly, I lied about those to protect myself and my job.”
Wolfe also called his actions a “personal failure” and said he let down the members of the committee he served. He maintained however that he “never compromised classified information.”
Wolfe also had the support of bipartisan members of the committee, some of whom wrote a letter to the court last week.
“Jim has already lost much through these events, to include his career and reputation, and we do not believe there is any public utility in depriving him of his freedom,” Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., and former Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote in a letter filed last week.
