Ashley Tellis, ex-White House India adviser, charged under Espionage Act

Ashley Tellis is a prominent India expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, and previously was a top India adviser in President George W. Bush’s administration and a senior US diplomat in New Delhi

A former White House National Security Council staffer and current State Department adviser has been arrested and charged with illegally keeping more than 1,000 pages of classified documents at his Northern Virginia home.

Ashley Tellis was taken into custody after making an initial court appearance on Tuesday in Alexandria, Virginia. The FBI raided his home in Vienna, Virginia, on October 11 and found the documents with “top secret” and “secret” markings, according to an affidavit filed with the US District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia. The affidavit also alleges he met with Chinese officials at a restaurant carrying a manila envelope.

An FBI spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” Tellis’ attorneys, Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas, said in a statement.

Tellis is a prominent India expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank, and previously was a top India adviser in President George W. Bush’s administration and a senior US diplomat in New Delhi.

In addition to serving as an unpaid senior adviser at the State Department, Tellis is a contractor in the Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, according to the affidavit.

He comments regularly in the media and has published in prestigious foreign policy publications, and is known for sometimes being critical of a closer US-India relationship — including in one 2023 piece titled “America’s Bad Bet on India.”

In an affidavit, FBI special agent Jeffrey Scott said Tellis had printed and taken classified material out of secure rooms, including documents on US Air Force military aircraft capabilities, and carried them out of the State Department headquarters in a leather briefcase.

Scott also said Tellis has met numerous times with Chinese officials over the past few years. At a dinner in 2022, Tellis met with Chinese officials at a restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia, and arrived carrying a manila envelope that he did not appear to have when he left, Scott said.

At a separate dinner with Chinese government officials in 2023, Tellis was overheard discussing Iranian-Chinese relations and “emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence,” according to Scott’s affidavit.