Accused
FinCen Leaker Edwards Pleads
Not Guilty As Her
Lawyer Tells
Press Unsure
Who Owns
Other Device
Searched
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
January 30 –
The U.S. Treasury employee
accused in October of leaking
Suspicious Activity Reports
about Paul Manafort and
others, Natalie Edwards,
pleaded not guilty on January
30 in the Southern District of
New York.
Afterward on
Worth Street, Inner City Press
asked her lawer Jacob Kaplan
of Brafman & Associates
about a statement made during
the proceeding, that another
person's device was also
search. Kaplan acknowledged
that had been said, adding
that he didn't know who it
was. Video here,
Vine here.
Discovery will begin once a
protective order has been
negotiated. The next court
date is April 2 at 4 pm. The
prosecutor, Daniel Richenthal,
gave a copy of the Information
to some in attendance.
Here's from what
was announced in the Complaint
in October: "Beginning in
approximately October 2017,
and lasting until the present,
EDWARDS unlawfully disclosed
numerous SARs to a reporter
(“Reporter-1”), the substance
of which were published over
the course of approximately 12
articles by a news
organization for which
Reporter-1 wrote (“News
Organization-1”). The
illegally disclosed SARs
pertained to, among other
things, Paul Manafort, Richard
Gates, the Russian Embassy,
Mariia Butina, and Prevezon
Alexander. EDWARDS had access
to each of the pertinent SARs
and saved them – along with
thousands of other files
containing sensitive
government information – to a
flash drive provided to her by
FinCEN. She transmitted the
SARs to Reporter-1 by means
that included taking
photographs of them and
texting the photographs to
Reporter-1 over an encrypted
application. In addition to
disseminating SARs to
Reporter-1, EDWARDS sent
Reporter-1 internal FinCEN
emails appearing to relate to
SARs or other information
protected by the BSA, and
FinCEN nonpublic memoranda,
including Investigative Memos
and Intelligence Assessments
published by the FinCEN
Intelligence Division, which
contained confidential
personal, business, and/or
security threat assessments.
At the time of EDWARDS’s
arrest, she was in possession
of a flash drive appearing to
be the flash drive on which
she saved the unlawfully
disclosed SARs, and a
cellphone containing numerous
communications over an
encrypted application in which
she transmitted SARs and other
sensitive government
information to Reporter-1."
We'll have more on this.
***
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
Box 20047, Dag Hammarskjold
Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2019 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com for
|
,
