State Dept Adviser Accused of Removing Classified Docs

A senior adviser in the State Department has been accused by the Department of Justice of removing classified documents from secure government sites and meeting with Chinese officials.

Ashley Tellis, 64, a native of Mumbai, India, and resident of Vienna, Virginia, was charged over the weekend with unlawfully retaining classified national defense documents and meeting with Chinese government officials on multiple occasions, according to court documents obtained by the Hindustan Times.

Tellis held a top-secret security clearance with access to sensitive compartmented information.

"We are fully focused on protecting the American people from all threats, foreign and domestic," Lindsey Halligan, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a news release. "The charges as alleged in this case represent a grave risk to the safety and security of our citizens. The facts and the law in this case are clear, and we will continue following them to ensure that justice is served."

If convicted, Tellis — a naturalized U.S. citizen who has been a State Department adviser since 2001 — faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Tellis was ordered detained Tuesday pending a detention hearing next week.

One of his attorneys, Deborah Curtis, told The Associated Press that "we look forward to the hearing, where we'll be able to present evidence." She declined to comment further.

Federal investigators on Saturday found more than 1,000 pages of documents marked "top secret" or "secret" at Tellis' home in Virginia following a search warrant, the Times reported, citing an affidavit by an FBI agent.

The classified materials were in locked filing cabinets in a basement office, on a desk, and in three large black trash bags in an unfinished storage room, the affidavit stated.

Besides his State Department work, Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy, particularly Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

His Carnegie biography stated he was senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs and was instrumental in negotiating a civil nuclear agreement with India. He also served on the National Security Council staff as a special assistant to President George W. Bush and as senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia.

According to the affidavit, Tellis was caught on surveillance video on Sept. 25 accessing classified computer systems at the State Department's Harry S. Truman Building and printing hundreds of pages of classified documents, including a 1,288-page file concerning U.S. Air Force tactics, the Times reported.

The affidavit stated that Tellis renamed the file "Econ Reform" before printing selected pages, then deleted the file after printing.

On Friday, surveillance footage from a secure compartmented information facility (SCIF) at the Mark Center in Alexandria, Virginia, allegedly showed Tellis concealing classified documents — including material marked "top secret" — inside notepads before placing them in his briefcase and leaving, the Times reported.

The affidavit also detailed several meetings between Tellis and Chinese government officials at restaurants in Fairfax, Virginia, from September 2022 to September 2025.

At a dinner on Sept. 15, 2022, "Tellis entered the restaurant with a manila envelope" that "did not appear" to be in his possession when he left, according to the document cited by the Times.

At later meetings, Tellis and Chinese officials were overheard discussing Iranian-Chinese relations, emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, and U.S.-Pakistan relations, according to the affidavit. In a September meeting, Chinese officials gave Tellis a red gift bag, the document stated.

Tellis was scheduled to travel to Rome with his family on the same day the search warrant was executed for a work engagement with a planned return via Milan on Oct. 27, according to the affidavit.

Newsmax has reached out to the Justice Department and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for comment.