A senior adviser to the State Department has been accused of taking more than a thousand classified documents from secure government locations and meeting with Chinese officials over several years.
Federal prosecutors charged Ashley Tellis, a longtime foreign policy expert and contractor for the Department of Defense, with unlawful retention of national defense information, Fox News reported.
Tellis, who held a top-secret clearance, served as an unpaid senior adviser to the State Department and as a contractor for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, recently renamed the Department of War.
Court documents said he was considered a subject-matter expert on India and South Asian affairs in his government roles.
Investigators said Tellis began working for the State Department in 2001 and continued to have access to sensitive defense and intelligence information.
He also worked as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, according to prosecutors.
Authorities said a search of his Vienna, Virginia, home uncovered more than a thousand pages of government material marked “TOP SECRET” and “SECRET.”
Court records allege that Tellis printed classified materials at least twice in September of this year.
On Sept. 12, investigators said he asked a coworker at a government facility to print multiple classified documents for him.
On Sept. 25, prosecutors said Tellis printed U.S. Air Force documents describing military aircraft capabilities.
The Justice Department said he met with Chinese government officials multiple times between 2022 and 2023 while holding or discussing sensitive information.
During one meeting in September 2022 at a Virginia restaurant, authorities said Tellis was seen carrying a manila envelope while speaking with Chinese officials.
An affidavit said that during an April 11, 2023, dinner meeting, Tellis and the officials discussed Iranian-Chinese relations and emerging technologies.
Prosecutors said he received a gift bag at another dinner on Sept. 2 of last year.
Federal officials said they are still investigating whether any of the documents were shared or compromised.
Tellis is currently being held pending a detention hearing.
Neither the State Department nor the Department of Defense immediately responded to requests for comment.
The Carnegie Endowment also declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.
If convicted, Tellis faces a possible sentence of up to ten years in federal prison.
In June, a naturalized U.S. citizen pled guilty to charges he conspired to become an agent for the Chinese government, the Justice Department announced.
According to court filings, Yuanjun Tang, 68, is a former Chinese citizen who was imprisoned for his dissident activities opposing the Chinese Communist Party’s one-party rule, including his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. He defected to Taiwan in 2002 before being granted political asylum in the United States.
Tang has since lived in New York City, where he regularly joins events with fellow Chinese dissidents and leads a nonprofit focused on promoting democracy in China.
From at least 2018 through June 2023, Tang allegedly operated in the United States as an agent of China, carrying out assignments and collecting information at the direction of the Ministry of State Security (MSS), the country’s main civilian intelligence agency.
The MSS oversees foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, espionage, and political security operations for Beijing, a DOJ press release noted.
Prosecutors say Tang took regular direction from an MSS intelligence officer, reporting on individuals and groups the Chinese government considered hostile to its interests — including prominent U.S.-based Chinese dissidents and democracy activists.
According to the filings, Tang relayed information on specific people flagged by the MSS, identifying, photographing, and recording participants at pro-democracy events in the United States. He also provided details ranging from contact information for New York immigration lawyers to explanations of the U.S. political asylum process.
Tang was paid for his work and traveled at least three times to Macau and mainland China for in-person meetings with MSS intelligence officers, during which he underwent questioning and polygraph tests.