Former Senate staffer is indicted
The former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee made an initial court appearance on Friday after his indictment on charges that he lied to federal investigators probing a leak involving a former campaign aide to President Trump.
The indictment of James A. Wolfe, 57, indicates that FBI agents were trying to determine how reporters learned that Carter Page, the former Trump campaign aide, had contacts with Russian intelligence operatives. The contacts were revealed to the Senate committee by law enforcement officials in classified documents, according to the indictment, which was unsealed late Thursday after his arrest.
On Friday afternoon, Wolfe appeared before Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore. Dressed in a white shirt and gray pants, Wolfe was expressionless and composed. He was represented in court by a public defender and requested a court-appointed lawyer.
By Friday morning the case had already begun setting off partisan fireworks. The Breitbart news site and other conservative media dubbed Wolfe a “deep-state leaker,” saying the charges against him bolstered their theory that a cabal of government officials conspired to go after Trump and members of his campaign team after he won the presidency.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House before departing for the G-7 summit in Quebec, called the case “very important — it’s a very important leaker.”
“It could be a terrific thing,” Trump said “I’m a big, big believer in freedom of the press. But I’m also a believer in classified information has to remain classified.”
The extent to which the case involves classified information remained uncertain.
The chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, issued a joint statement noting that “the charges do not appear to include anything related to the mishandling of classified information” but adding that “the committee takes this matter extremely seriously.”