Senate intelligence staffer who dated Times reporter pleads guilty to lying to FBI

Leaking with a smile

James A. Wolfe, a 58-year-old Democrat and former security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee has pleaded guilty to one count of providing a false statement to FBI agents who were looking into leaks of national security information that wound up in the hands of several reporters, including one reporter at The New York Times  Wolfe dated, the DoJ announced Monday.

Wolfe was in charge of maintaining all classified information coming from the executive branch to the Senate panel and served as the panel's security director for nearly 30 years.

"Did you make a false statement to the FBI?" D.C. district court judge Ketanji B. Jackson asked Wolfe, who was scheduled to appear for a routing status hearing before the announcement came from prosecutors that "substantial" negotiations had produced a guilty plea.

"I did, your honor," Wolfe replied.

It turns out he lied to the FBI in Dec. 2017 about contacts he had with 3 reporters, according to his statement of offense. He also allegedly lied about providing two reporters non-public information about committee matters. His one count plea absolves the other two counts and they will be dismissed.

President Trump said this summer that Wolfe's arrest "could be a terrific thing" and referred to him as a "very important leaker."

"I'm a big, big believer in freedom of the press," Trump told the press in his bigly big way he has. "But I'm also a believer in classified information. It has to remain classified."

Which is the reason they classify it.

But in a statement released after Wolfe pleaded guilty, his attorneys emphasized he had not been charged with leaking classified information.

Nobody is ever charged with leaking classified information or there would be nobody left to run the government.

"Jim has accepted responsibility for his actions and has chosen to resolve this matter now so that he and his family can move forward with their lives," [Barack Obama "Forward" style], the lawyers said in a statement. "We will have much more to say about the facts and Jim's distinguished record of nearly three decades of dedicated service to the Senate and the intelligence community [before screwing up] at his sentencing hearing."

Wolfe's sentencing is scheduled on December 20. The charge carries a maximum potential sentence of five years and a fine of $250,000, but he has connections in Washington and he'll probably only do six months.

Earlier in the year, The New York Times revealed that the feds had seized years' worth of email and phone records relating to one of its reporters, Ali Watkins. She had a three-year tryst  with Wolfe, the Times reported, adding that the records included a time before she joined the paper. She had previously worked for BuzzFeed, Politico and McClathcy.

Wolfe's affair with Watkins specifically didn't seem related to the charge he admitted to on Monday. He allegedly exchanged "tens of thousands of electronic communications with one reporter, including one that read, '"I've watched your career take off even before you ever had a career in journalism . . . I always tried to give you as much information that I could and to do the right thing with it so you could get that scoop before anyone else . . . "

Now how about you and me we get together, eh?


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