Contractor charged with leaking document about US election hacking

The US Department of Justice on Monday charged a federal contractor with sending classified material to a news organisation, marking one of the first concrete efforts by the Trump administration to crack down on leaks to the media.

Reality Leigh Winner, 25, was charged with removing classified material from a government facility located in Georgia. She was arrested on 3 June, the Justice Department said.

The charges were announced less than an hour after The Intercept published a top-secret document from the US National Security Agency that described Russian efforts to launch cyber attacks on at least one US voting software supplier and send "spear-phishing" emails, or targeted emails that try to trick a recipient into clicking on a malicious link to steal data, to more than 100 local election officials days before the presidential election last November.

However, there is no suggestion in the document that the hackers were successful.

The NSA file in question was apparently marked for declassification not before May 2042.

NBC News reported that she is a contractor with Pluribus International Corporation and had been employed at an NSA facility in Georgia since February. The accused faces a count of "gathering, transmitting or losing defence information", according to the network.

American intelligence agencies have accused the Kremlin of trying to interfere in the election to ensure Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

Several congressional committees and the FBI are investigating the matter.

The president has repeatedly dismissed the story as "fake news", arguing that the real scandal is how the allegations are being leaked to the media.

Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised allegations levelled against the Kremlin as being based on assumptions and not on concrete evidence.

“It’s an attempt to solve internal political problems using foreign policy instruments,” he said. “It’s harmful, hurting international relations, the global economy, security and the fight against terror. It’s time to stop that useless and harmful chatter.”

The US government placed sanctions on Russia late last year after it concluded that Russia had at least attempted to tilt the scales in some way or another.