Trump Administration Won't Say How A Random CBP Agent Would Know Of A Reporter's Personal Travel
President Donald Trump’s administration is refusing to explain how and why Jeffrey Rambo, apparently a random U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent, may have known about a reporter’s personal travel — or whether he was authorized to access that information at all.
In June 2017, Rambo, whose official role CBP also refuses to explain, contacted national security reporter Ali Watkins, identified himself as a government agent and implied that he could be a source, according to The Washington Post. But when they met, he grilled her about her work and her personal life, noting the dates and locations of international trips she took with James Wolfe, then the director of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee, whom she was dating. Rambo didn’t give Watkins his name, but he mentioned that the Trump administration was aggressively investigating journalists and their sources.
But Customs and Border Protection is not normally involved in investigations of national security leaks. The Justice Department, which handles such matters, says it didn’t ask Rambo for help.
“We are not aware of who Jeff Rambo is, and he was not involved in the investigation,” a Justice Department official wrote in an email to HuffPost.
Federal officials arrested Wolfe last week and accused him of lying to the FBI about his contact with Watkins, who now works for The New York Times, and other reporters. Wolfe pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. The New York Times also revealed that the Justice Department had seized years of Watkins’ phone and email records as part of its investigation into leaks of classified information.
The indictment doesn’t mention CBP and nothing in them explains how Rambo may have come to know private details about Watkins’ travel. If he got the information through his job, it suggests he could have obtained similar information about other travelers, not just Watkins.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cbp-agent-jeffrey-rambo-reporter-travel_us_5b22dc21e4b07cb1712cdc25
= new reply since forum marked as read
