(CNN)A former civilian employee of the Defense Department was sentenced Thursday to three months in prison after admitting to taking materials containing classified information to her hotel room and to her personal residence.
The ex-employee's sentencing coincidentally came the same week of revelations that the National Archives had raised concerns about government documents found at the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump in recent months. The Archives asked the Justice Department to investigate the matter, prompting questions of whether the handling of classified information and government documents could lead to a criminal probe.
The declassification authorities Trump held as president could limit his criminal liability and questions remain whether he had declassified any of the documents that had been found at Mar-a-Lago.
The ex-Defense Department employee sentenced Thursday, Asia Janay Lavarello, was on a temporary assignment at the US Embassy in Manilla when she took classified documents from the embassy to her hotel room, according to court filings. She hosted a dinner party at her hotel on the day she removed the documents, March 20, 2020, and an embassy co-worker in attendance found the documents, which had classified markings on them, according to the court filings.
Lavarello was working on a classified thesis at the time, her lawyer Birney Bervar told CNN. She had been encouraged to pursue the thesis and been working on it at the embassy's secure...
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