A judge on Monday ordered that a former federal contractor who allegedly passed top secret information to a Washington Post reporter be released on home detention — with his location monitored and no access to internet-connected devices — ahead of his trial next February. File Photo by Sascha Steinbach/EPA
May 4 (UPI) — A man accused of leaking classified military information to a Washington Post reporter will be released on home detention ahead of his trial next year, a judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Michael Maddox ordered the Justice Department to release Aurelio Perez Lugones to be held on home detention until his trial in February.
Lugones, whose location would be monitored and blocked from using internet-connected devices, is charged with leaking classified information to Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, Politico and The New York Times reported.
Natanson’s home was raided in January by the FBI, with the agency seizing two laptop computers, a cell phone and a Garmin Watch as it investigated Lugones, who was a systems administrator at the Pentagon with a top-secret security clearance.
He allegedly had been taking classified reports home and keeping them before passing some to Natanson, which motivated prosecutors to suggest he could send more information to her if she was not held in jail until the trial.
“The government has no way of knowing what he has retained and what he is able to provide to others,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia McLane said during the hearing.
“The person he was communicating with is still employed and has a willingness to accept classified and national defense information … The receptacle of additional national defense information is still available to the defendant,” she said.
The controversial search of a journalist’s home was triggered by stories Natanson wrote about various national security issues, including one that noted the more than 1,000 sources she had cultivated during the course of her reporting.
Magistrate Judge William Porter approved the search warrant, though he was not told about a federal law that restricts the government from raiding reporters and news organizations, and has said he would go through Natanson’s records for things related to the national security case.
Lugones attorney pushed back on the prosecutors’ assertion that he has “a historical Rolodex of classified information in his head,” and that he’d lost his job, top-secret clearance and access to classified information.
The prosecutors said, however, that the information Lugones retained and passed to Natanson “was not old information.”
“This was current information regarding military movement in the Caribbean, in the Gulf and specifically with Venezuela,” McLane said during Monday’s hearing.
“We have a man who has thrown everything away in an attempt to get back at the administration,” she said.
Calling the prosecution’s argument for holding Lugones in jail speculative, Maddox ordered his release and set a trial date of Feb. 22.
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