Intelligence contractor charged over 'NSA report on Russian election hacking' in Trump's first leak case

An intelligence contractor has been charged with leaking classified material about Russia's attempts to meddle in the US election, in the first such case under the Trump administration.

The US Department of Justice announced the espionage charges on Monday, marking one of the first concrete efforts of Donald Trump's promised crackdown on leaks to the media.  

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, was arrested on June 3 and charged with removing classified material from a government facility located in Georgia and releasing it to a news organisation.

While the charges do not name the publication, a US official with knowledge of the case told Reuters that Ms Winner was charged with leaking a US National Security Agency report to The Intercept.

The charges were announced less than an hour after the news website published a top-secret document from the NSA that described Russian efforts to launch cyber attacks on at least one US voting software supplier and send "spear-phising" emails, or targeted emails that try to trick a recipient into clicking on a malicious link to steal data, to more than 100 local election officials days before the presidential election last November.

A second official confirmed The Intercept document was authentic and did not dispute that the charges against Winner were directly tied to it.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the case beyond its filing. Federal Bureau of Investigation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, praised the operation.

"Releasing classified material without authorisation threatens our nation’s security and undermines public faith in government,” he said a statement reported by the New York Times.

"People who are trusted with classified information and pledge to protect it must be held accountable when they violate that obligation.”

The Intercept's reporting reveals new details behind the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russian intelligence services were seeking to infiltrate state voter registration systems as part of a broader effort to interfere in the election, discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and help Mr Trump, the then Republican candidate, win the election.

The new material does not, however, suggest that actual votes were manipulated.

The Intercept co-founding editor Glenn Greenwald did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the charges. On Twitter, he said of the document: "Journalism requires that document be published and reported. Rationality requires it be read skeptically."

Ms Winner's mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said she was shocked to learn about her daughter's arrest.  

"I don't know what they're alleging," she told told The Daily Beast. "I don't know who she might have sent it to. [DOJ] were very vague.  They said she mishandled and released documents that she shouldn't have, but we had no idea what it pertained to or who."

While partially redacted, the NSA document is marked to show it would be up for declassification on May 5, 2042. The indictment against Ms Winner alleges she "printed and improperly removed" classified intelligence reporting that was dated "on or about May 5, 2017."

Classified documents are typically due to be declassified after 25 years under an executive order signed under former President Bill Clinton.

The NSA opened a facility in Augusta in 2012 at Fort Gordon, a US Army outpost.

The FBI and several congressional committees are investigating how Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and whether associates of Mr Trump may have colluded with Russian intelligence operatives during the campaign.

Mr Trump has dismissed the allegations as "fake news," while attempting to refocus attention on leaks of information to the media.

Ms Winner graduated from basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in 2011. Investigators determined she was one of only six individuals to print the document in question and that she had exchanged emails with the news outlet, according to the indictment.

US intelligence agencies including the NSA and CIA have fallen victim to several thefts of classified material in recent years, often at the hands of a federal contractor.

For example, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 disclosed secret documents to journalists, including The Intercept's Greenwald, that revealed broad US surveillance programs.