For
Leaking FinCen SARs of
Manafort Edwards Pled Guilty
Now Six Weeks Delay in
Sentencing
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video,
thread,
Patreon
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
May 22 –
The U.S. Treasury employee
accused in October 2018 of
leaking Suspicious Activity
Reports about Paul Manafort
and others, Natalie Edwards,
pleaded guilty to one count on
January 13, 2020 before U.S.
District Court Southern
District of New York Judge
Gregory H. Woods.
Edwards
got a plea agreement for
between zero and six months
and a $9500 fine which her
lawyer afterward told Inner
City Press was a standard
fine. Video here;
live tweeted thread
of plea proceeding here.
More on Patreon here.
Now on May
22, Edwards sentencing which
had been set for July 8 has
been extended six weeks by
Judge Woods: "Application
granted. The deadline for
disclosing the final
pre-sentence report is
extended to June 22, 2020.
Sentencing is adjourned to
August 21, 2020 at 10:00 a.m.
Defendant's sentencing
submissions are due no later
than July 31, 2020; the
Government's sentencing
submissions are due no later
than August 7, 2020. As a
result of this adjournment,
the Court anticipates that the
sentencing will take place in
person in Courtroom 12C."
Inner City Press will be
there.
Back in
January the allocution almost
broke down when Judge Woods
asked Edwards if she knew what
she did was wrong. She
mentioned that word
whistleblower then got cut
off.
After
Assistant US Attorney Maurene
Comey and her colleagues
conferred with Agnifilo and
Jacob
Kaplan, also
with Brafman
&
Associates,
the plea got
back on track.
Edwards said
she knew the
disclosure to
BuzzFeed was
not
authorized.
Outside the
SDNY
courthouse
afterward,
Inner City
Press and
others puts
questions to
Agnifilo.
Inner City
Press asked if
Edwards had
sought
whistleblower
status.
Agnifilo said
genially that
he declined to
answer. He
added that he
will be
seeking a non
incarceratory
sentence. The
sentencing is
set for June 9
at 4 pm. Watch
this site. More
on Patreon here.
Back on January
30, 2019 on Worth Street,
Inner City Press asked her
Kaplan about a statement made
during the initial 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.
Here's from what
was announced in the Complaint
in October 2018: "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.
***
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