BREAKING: Longtime State Dept employee accused of mishandling classified docs, meeting Chinese officials

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From Fox News: A State Department employee is accused of removing classified documents from secure locations and meeting with Chinese officials dating back to 2023.

The Justice Department said Ashley Tellis was an unpaid senior adviser to the State Department and also a contractor with the Office of Net Assessment at the Department of Defense, recently renamed the Department of War. He is considered a subject-matter expert on India and South Asian affairs in his role at the Office of Net Assessment.

Tellis began working for the State Department in 2001, court documents state. He is accused of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to an affidavit.

He held a top-secret clearance and had access to sensitive information, federal prosecutors said in court documents. He was also employed as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Tellis was born in 1961 in Mumbai, India. He began working for the State Department during the first year of George W. Bush’s administration.

A court document shared by Fox News states:

On October 11, 2025, a federal court issued a search warrant authorizing the search of Tellis’s house in Vienna, Virginia, as well as Tellis’s vehicle and person. The searches were conducted the same day.

While searching Tellis’s house in Vienna, investigators located over a thousand pages of paper documents with classification markings at the TOP SECRET and/or SECRET levels at various locations within the house.

The report explains that the classified documents in Tellis’s home were found in four main locations:

  1. A four-drawer locked filing cabinet in a closet in the basement home office area
  2. A two-drawer locked filing cabinet in a closet in the basement home office area
  3. In the vicinity of a desk in the basement home office area, and
  4. In three large black trash bags in a an unfinished storage room in the basement.

Additional allegations shared by Fox News include:

On Sept. 12, Tellis had a coworker at a government facility print multiple classified documents for him, authorities said.

On Sept. 25, he allegedly printed U.S. Air Force documents concerning military aircraft capabilities. Federal prosecutors allege that he met with Chinese government officials multiple times over the past several years.

In September 2022, he met with Chinese officials at a Virginia restaurant while holding a manila envelope, prosecutors said.

During a meeting on April 11, 2023, Tellis and Chinese officials were heard talking about Iranian-Chinese relations and emerging technologies while dining at a restaurant, authorities said.

He received a gift bag at a Sept. 2 dinner meeting with Chinese officials as well, court documents state.

Tellis’s profile on the Carnegie Endowment website includes the following:

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in international security and U.S. foreign and defense policy with a special focus on Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

While on assignment to the U.S. Department of State as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs, he was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India.

Previously he was commissioned into the U.S. Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He also served on the National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Tellis was senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School.

This is a developing story…

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