US Contractor Arrested for Allegedly Leaking Classified Secrets to a Substack Newsletter

The FBI arrested a government contractor in Washington on Friday, October 23, 2026, and prosecutors charged him with leaking national defense information to his romantic partner, who published classified material on Substack.

Ian A. Brinksman, 42, of the District of Columbia, was arrested after agents searched his residence. He is charged by criminal complaint with unlawfully transmitting national defense information, an allegation he is presumed innocent of unless proven guilty in court. A federal public defender representing him declined to comment, Reuters reported.

A CIA contractor with top secret access

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the arrest followed a referral from the agency and that Brinksman provided services to the CIA. According to the complaint, Brinksman began working in 2020 for a US government agency based in the Eastern District of Virginia. In 2022 he moved to a systems integration developer job at a private company contracting for the same agency. He held a Top Secret clearance with Sensitive Compartmented Information access throughout, prosecutors said.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department will keep prosecuting people who leak classified information. FBI Director Kash Patel said agents arrested Brinksman after he was allegedly caught betraying his oath.

Five reports and hundreds of calls

An FBI affidavit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia says Brinksman accessed five classified intelligence reports between March and October 2026, all outside his assigned duties and all marked Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information. Investigators say that on at least five occasions in 2026, information from the reports appeared in Substack articles she published, some of it at the top secret level.

The affidavit cites phone records, database access logs, badge records and emails, and says the two exchanged more than 800 calls or attempted calls during 2026, including calls shortly before and after he opened classified reports. On March 11, 2026, she called Brinksman at about 8:41 a.m. Less than an hour later he accessed a top secret report twice, and she published an article the same day with classified information reflecting the report, investigators said. Similar sequences followed in May, July and October.

The affidavit identifies her only as Individual 1 and quotes a September 2026 fundraising article in which she wrote that she had published reporting based on classified assessments from the agency. Reuters reported that the quoted line appears in a piece published on September 28, 2026, in the Capital and Empire newsletter, written by Aída Chávez. Chávez did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters said. Messages also show Brinksman helped her edit articles, and in a November 2025 email he told a friend he had been helping her get the publication off the ground, investigators say.

An Espionage Act charge

Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg said Brinksman, as alleged, reached far outside his own duties to obtain closely held secrets and handed them to a partner he knew intended to publish them. He called it a betrayal of Brinksman's oath and a grave violation of the Espionage Act if proven at trial. Newsmax reported the charge carries up to 10 years in prison.

The FBI Chicago Field Office is leading the investigation, with help from the Washington Field Office. Trial attorneys Eli Ross and Kathryn DeMarco of the National Security Division and Assistant US Attorney Vito Iaia are prosecuting the case. A LinkedIn profile bearing his name lists work for Deloitte and earlier service as a State Department foreign service officer, Reuters reported. Neither Deloitte nor the State Department commented in time for the Reuters report.