ARRESTED: Senior Treasury Official Charged For Leaking Paul Manafort Files To Media, Plus 1000s of Other Documents

A senior Treasury department official accused of leaking highly sensitive financial reports to a journalist looking into the overseas dealings of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, as well as transactions involving the Russian embassy, has just been arrested by the Justice Department.

Senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, has been charged with one count of unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, and one count of conspiracy to make unauthorized disclosures of suspicious activity reports (SARs)–for allegedly sending the files to an unidentified reporter beginning in October of 2017, according to authorities.

Brad Heath (@bradheath) tweeted a thread on Wednesday:

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Brad Heath

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DOJ has filed criminal charges against a Treasury Dep't official alleging a conspiracy to leak confidential "suspicious activity reports" about Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and others to a BuzzFeed reporter.

11:56 AM - Oct 17, 2018

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The reports, which focused on Manafort, the Russian Embassy, Prevezon Alexander real estate company, alleged Russian spy Maria Butina, and Manafort’s former business partner Rick Gates, were later detailed in roughly 12 articles, all published by BuzzFeed, according to court documents.

“Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior-level FinCEN employee, betrayed her position of trust by repeatedly disclosing highly sensitive information contained in Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) to an individual not authorized to receive them,” said U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.

“SARs, which are filed confidentially by banks and other financial institutions to alert law enforcement to potentially illegal transactions, are not public documents, and it is an independent federal crime to disclose them outside of one’s official duties.”

“We hope today’s charges remind those in positions of trust within government agencies that the unlawful sharing of sensitive documents will not be tolerated and will be met with swift justice by this Office,” he added.

40-year-old Edwards had saved the SARs, along with thousands of other files containing sensitive government information, to a flash drive provided to her by FinCen, according to court documents. DOH alleges that the FinCEN employee saved over 24,000 suspicious activity reports to the flash drive.

The files were saved to a folder named “Debacle – Operation-CF,” which contained subfolders named “asshat,” “debacle,” and “emails,” according to Law & Crime.

The Virginia native, federal prosecutors say, sent the information to the reporter via an encrypted app.

On top of that, Edwards is also accused of sending the reporter internal FinCEN emails and documents including confidential memos and intelligence assessments that contained various threat assessments to...
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