She was willing to break the law and use her position and politics in an attempt to harm Orange Man. Except she’s the one going to the hoosgow.
She’s no whistleblower, she’s a criminal.
A former senior Treasury Department official was sentenced Thursday to six months in prison for leaking thousands of documents to a news reporter while she worked at a financial crimes division at the agency.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards pleaded guilty last year to leaking suspicious activity reports, known as SARs, during her time at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network — but maintained she did so as a whistleblower to highlight alleged corruption in the government.
Manhattan federal court Judge Gregory Woods sided with prosecutors, who requested a maximum sentence of six months after Sours Edwards pleaded guilty.
Woods said at the sentencing hearing that the unauthorized leaking may have made our country less safe and may have put scrutiny on innocent people, as the reports reveal identities of people under suspicion who may have not committed a crime.
“The crime was a serious one,” Woods said, adding a sentence that included prison time was necessary to deter potential criminals.
She conspired to give a reporter sensitive information about Donald Trump’s onetime campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
A former U.S. Treasury Department official has been sentenced to jail for leaking thousands of pages of anti-Trump financial information to the news media.
Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards was a senior adviser in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
She was allowed to plead to a single count of a conspiracy crime for leaking over 2,000 confidential banking documents called “suspicious activity reports.”
Edwards was reportedly sentenced to six months in jail.
That’s more time than a former FBI attorney received after admitting to doctoring a document to illegally obtain a wiretap against former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. That attorney, Kevin Clinesmith, got 12 months of probation for his crime.
And that was harsher punishment than given to former FBI Director James Comey. An Inspector General investigation recommended Comey be prosecuted for improperly leaking anti-Trump information to the news media. However, the Dept. of Justice where Comey worked declined to prosecute him.
At her sentencing, she launched into a tirade about her Native American upbringing and how she was supposedly raised to act with integrity. Too bad that wasn’t the case.
The recipient of the leaked material was Buzzfeed reporter Jason Leopold.
Sours Edwards gave Leopold some 50,000 documents, which were the basis for a number of stories under the title “FinCEN Files.” The information revealed how drug cartels and the terrorist organization Hezbollah laundered money through global banking systems and gave them advance notice about investigations into their crimes.
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