classified

RALEIGH, N.C. — An Army veteran has been charged with sharing classified information about an elite commando unit with a journalist, which one official said put the country, members of the U.S. military and the nation’s allies at risk.

Courtney Williams, 40, of Wagram, N.C., is accused of violating federal law, as well as multiple nondisclosure agreements, by sharing details of her work with a “special military unit” at Fort Bragg, N.C.

“Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving and damages our nation’s security,” Reid Davis, the FBI special agent in charge in North Carolina, said in a U.S. Justice Department news release.

Williams “swore an oath to safeguard our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk,” Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, said in the statement.

Williams, who is specifically charged with violating a provision of the Espionage Act, appeared Wednesday in Raleigh federal court, where a magistrate judge unsealed the case against her, initially filed late last week, according to online court records. She was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending hearings set for early next week.

Court records didn’t immediately name Williams’ lawyer. A man who answered a phone and identified himself as a family member of Williams declined to comment on the charges Wednesday.

Although the reporter and unit are not named in the court filings, dates and details match an article and book about the Army’s secretive Delta Force written by Seth Harp.

Williams was the focus of a 2025 Politico article with the headline: “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit.” It coincided with the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” which alleges sexual harassment and discrimination.

In a statement published by WRAL-TV, Harp called Williams “a brave whistleblower and truth-teller.”

“Former Delta Force operators disclose `national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,” Harp’s statement read. “This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”

According to an FBI affidavit attached to the complaint, Williams was cleared as a defense contractor in April 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee in November 2010.

She performed duties within the special military unit as an operational support technician responsible for “Tactics, Techniques and Procedures” used in preparation for and during “sensitive missions,” Special Agent Jocelyn Fox wrote in the affidavit.

According to Fox, Williams’ access to classified information was suspended “based on an internal investigation.” Fox said Williams was debriefed in September 2015 and signed a nondisclosure agreement.

The government alleges that Williams had been in contact with the unnamed journalist between 2022 and 2025.

“During this period, Williams and the Journalist had over 10 hours of telephone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages,” the news release said.

Fox cited a text between the two she said occurred on or about the day the book and article were published.

“Other than a few factual errors, I would definitely have been concerned with the amount of classified information being disclosed,” Williams’ text read, according to the affidavit. “I thought things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how the (SMU) was set up or operated would not be published and it feels like an entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) was sent out in my name giving them a chance to legally persecute me.”

Fox also cited an alleged exchange between Williams and her mother.

”`I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book,’” the affidavit read. “When her mother asked why she may be arrested, Williams responded `for disclosing classified information.’”

Fox wrote that the investigation so far has identified at least 10 batches of documents gathered that Williams intended to provide to the journalist.

Breed and Robertson write for the Associated Press. AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

1 of 4 | President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. A Justice Department disclosure sent to members of Congress shows Trump had classified documents related to his personal business dealings stored at Mar-a-Lago after he left the presidency. File Photo by Graeme Sloan/UPI | License Photo

March 25 (UPI) — A 2023 Justice Department disclosure to Congress revealed that President Donald Trump had documents so secretive that only six people had received copies among classified documents he kept at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office.

The disclosure was part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report on his investigation into Trump, which has not been made public. Elements of the report, though, were distributed to the House and Senate judiciary committees and subsequently made public this week as part of their own probes.

The disclosure detailed the types of documents Trump took with him to his home in Palm Beach after leaving office in 2020. Smith was appointed by former President Joe Biden to investigate the mishandled classified documents, resulting in 41 criminal counts against Trump. Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in 2024 and recently ruled that Smith’s full report can’t be released publicly.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday questioning why the Justice Department is “fighting tooth and nail to gag Special Counsel Jack Smith and bury his report.” He said the Justice Department’s disclosure sent to the committee earlier this month included “cherry-picked” documents related to the investigation.

“You have, quite amazingly, missed the fact that some of the documents you provided include damning evidence about your boss’s conduct and may well violate the gag order your DOJ and Donald Trump demanded from Judge Aileen Cannon,” the letter read.

Raskin’s letter said that the Justice Department disclosure included information that Trump held documents at Mar-a-Lago that only six people in the government had access to and that other documents related to his business interests.

The disclosure also indicated that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles — then the CEO of Trump’s super PAC — said she observed Trump showing off a classified map to fellow passengers on his private plane.

“This glimpse into the trove of evidence behind the coverup release a president of the United States who may have sold out our national security to enrich himself,” Raskin wrote.