U.S. Treasury employee Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges that she unlawfully disclosed information about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy Rick Gates to a BuzzFeed News reporter.
Court documents also revealed that Edwards told the reporter that another unidentified employee at the agency had a “wealth of information,” meaning other employees could be facing potential legal jeopardy.
Edwards was arrested in October and has been accused of leaking multiple suspicious activity reports concerning Manafort and Gates, the Russian Embassy, and Russian agent Maria Butina. The information was passed to a reporter starting in July 2017 and continued until her arrest, according to a complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in October.
She was charged with unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports and conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures of the reports.
“Today’s not guilty plea is another step in Mrs. Edwards’ principled commitment to defend these charges,” Marc Agnifilo and Jacob Kaplan, Edwards’ attorneys, said in a statement. “She is not the first person to be prosecuted for doing the right thing, and she is steadfast in seeing this matter to the end.”
Prosecutors claimed that Edwards had access and saved all the relevant suspicious activity reports on a Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network flash drive, along with thousands of files that also included sensitive government information. The reports were shared with the reporter through an encrypted application to share photographs of the reports, along with internal emails concerning the suspicious activity reports protected by the Bank Secrecy Act.
The information shared with the reporter appeared in approximately 12 news articles. Although the reporter and the outlet were not identified in the complaint, the articles referenced by prosecutors were published by BuzzFeed News and were authored by Jason Leopold, along with others including Anthony Cormier.
BuzzFeed declined to comment to the Washington Examiner.
Edwards, 40, is a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network but has been on administrative leave since October. She is slated to appear in court next on April 2.
