An employee holding positions with both the State Department and Justice Department has been charged with espionage, accused of sharing classified information with an intelligence official, according to a press release issued by the Justice Department on Thursday.
Abraham Teklu Lemma, a 50-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Ethiopia and residing in Maryland, held the role of IT administrator at the Department of State and worked as a management analyst for the Department of Justice.
The DOJ stated that as part of Lemma’s responsibilities within the federal government, he possessed top-secret security clearance and had access to classified systems. Between December 2022 and August 2023, Lemma is alleged to have “copied classified information from Intelligence Reports and deleted the classification markings from them,” as reported by the agency.