WASHINGTON: In a serious improvement, Ashley Tellis, a long-time US authorities adviser and professional on India and South Asia, has been charged with unlawfully holding nationwide defence data and assembly Chinese language officers. A federal affidavit filed on October 13, 2025, within the Jap District of Virginia accuses Tellis of taking labeled paperwork from safe amenities and storing them at his residence in Vienna, Virginia.
The ten-page affidavit filed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) particulars a sequence of surveillance observations and proof pointing to Tellis’s alleged misconduct, together with the elimination of labeled supplies from safe amenities.
In keeping with court docket paperwork, on September 12, 2025, video surveillance captured Tellis on the Division of Defence (DOD)’s Mark Centre in Alexandria, the place he had a co-worker print a number of labeled paperwork, together with one on the “TOP SECRET” stage.
On September 25, 2025, Tellis accessed a labeled State Division pc system in Washington, D.C., and opened a 1,288-page US Air Drive doc marked “secret”, the paperwork allege.
He allegedly renamed the file “Econ Reform” to cover its contents, printed a whole bunch of pages, after which deleted the file. The court docket paperwork say he additionally printed two different 40-page Air Drive paperwork on navy plane, each labeled “Secret.”
The FBI alleged that on October 10, Tellis was noticed hiding these paperwork – believed to incorporate the top-secret materials – inside notepads and putting them in his leather-based briefcase earlier than leaving the ability and driving residence.
The affidavit additionally famous that Tellis met a number of instances over time with Chinese language officers. In a single 2022 assembly, he arrived with a manila envelope and left with out it after two hours.
In later conferences, they mentioned subjects similar to Iran-China ties, synthetic intelligence, and US-Pakistan relations. At their most up-to-date assembly on September 2, 2025, Chinese language officers gave Tellis a pink present bag, the affidavit alleged.
The paperwork say that “Ashley Tellis is at the moment an unpaid Senior Advisor on the Division of State. Moreover, he’s a contractor within the Workplace of Internet Evaluation (ONA) inside the DoD. In his function with ONA, Tellis is taken into account a subject professional on India and South Asian affairs.
Moreover, he’s employed as a Senior Fellow on the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace, a suppose tank in Washington.” Tellis has beforehand served as a senior adviser to the US undersecretary of state for political affairs and was concerned in negotiating the civil nuclear settlement with India. Tellis couldn’t be instantly contacted for a response.