The arrest last week of a senior Treasury Department official for allegedly leaking sensitive records to BuzzFeed News had its roots in a bureaucratic dispute dating to the Obama administration, according to people familiar with the matter.
The alleged leaks, which went on for at least a year, also affected the investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan into President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, several people said. Investigators who became concerned about Buzzfeed News’ access to Treasury documents related to continuing criminal probes hurried to execute search warrants in the Cohen investigation, these people said—though it isn’t clear whether any of the leaked documents related to Cohen.
The unusual arrest of a high-level Treasury official, stemming from another case by the same unit prosecuting Cohen, has prompted questions about her motive for allegedly leaking so much confidential material. Left unanswered was how confidential financial information not accounted for in last week’s charges, including transactions involving Cohen’s bank accounts, was made public this year.
The employee accused of the leaks—Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN—is a supporter of President Trump who believed, along with some colleagues, that another Treasury unit was mishandling sensitive data, according to people familiar with the matter.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
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