A government contractor accused of leaking classified national security information to a Washington Post journalist was indicted by a federal grand jury in Maryland on Thursday. He was charged with five counts of unlawfully transmitting and one count of unlawfully retaining classified national defense information.
Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, 61, allegedly accessed classified national defense information illegally on multiple occasions between October 2025 and January 2026. He proceeded to give the information to an unnamed journalist, identified as “Reporter 1,” the Department of Justice said. The reporter who received the unauthorized data then used it to write “at least five articles that contained classified information.” Perez-Lugones had served in a variety of roles as a federal contractor since 2002.
