Williams is a North Carolina Army veteran whose case was unsealed this week in federal court in Raleigh, where she faces allegations that she shared classified information about a special Army unit with a journalist, according to a U.S. Justice Department news release cited by The Associated Press.
The government charged Williams, 40, of Wagram, North Carolina, with violating federal law and multiple nondisclosure agreements tied to her work at Fort Bragg, the AP reported. The filing says she was accused of sharing details about a “special military unit” and that prosecutors believe the disclosures would put the country, members of the U.S. military, and the nation’s allies at risk.
In the Justice Department’s statement, FBI special agent Reid Davis said, “Anyone divulging information they vowed to protect to a reporter for publication is reckless, self-serving and damages our nation’s security.” The statement also quoted Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence and Espionage Division, saying Williams “swore an oath to safeguard our nation’s secrets as an employee supporting a Special Military Unit of the Army, but she allegedly betrayed that oath by sharing classified information with a media outlet and putting our nation, our warfighters, and our allies at risk.”
According to AP’s account of the court proceedings, Williams appeared Wednesday in Raleigh federal court. A magistrate judge unsealed the case after it was initially filed late last week, and online court records cited by the AP show she was ordered held by the U.S. Marshals Service pending hearings scheduled for early next week. Court records reviewed by AP did not name Williams’ lawyer immediately, and a person who answered a phone and identified himself as a family member of Williams declined to comment.
AP said the court filings did not name the reporter or the unit, but dates and details match an article and book about the Army’s secretive Delta Force written by Seth Harp. The AP report said Williams had been the focus of a 2025 Politico article with the headline: “My Life Became a Living Hell: One Woman’s Career in Delta Force, the Army’s Most Elite Unit,” which ran around the release of Harp’s book, “The Fort Bragg Cartel,” alleging sexual harassment and discrimination.
In a statement published by WRAL-TV, Harp described Williams as “a brave whistleblower and truth-teller.” Harp’s statement, as quoted by the AP, said that “Former Delta Force operators disclose `national defense information’ on podcasts and YouTube shows every day, but the government is going after Courtney for the sole reason that she exposed sexual harassment and gender discrimination in the unit,” and added that “This is a vindictive act of retaliation, plain and simple.”
The AP report also said the complaint included an FBI affidavit that described Williams’ security history. The affidavit attached to the complaint, as summarized by AP, said Williams was cleared as a defense contractor in April 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee in November 2010. It said she performed duties within the special military unit as an operational support technician responsible for “Tactics, Techniques and Procedures” used in preparation for and during “sensitive missions.”
According to AP, the affidavit said Williams’ access to classified information was suspended “based on an internal investigation,” and that she was debriefed in September 2015 after signing a nondisclosure agreement. Prosecutors also alleged that Williams had been in contact with the unnamed journalist between 2022 and 2025, during which, according to AP, they had over 10 hours of telephone calls and exchanged more than 180 messages.
AP said the affidavit cited a text exchange between Williams and the journalist dated “on or about the day the book and article were published.” The report included a passage that Fox wrote appeared in the affidavit: “Other than a few factual errors, I would definitely have been concerned with the amount of classified information being disclosed,” Williams’ text read, according to the affidavit. AP also reported that the text continued: “I thought things I was telling you so you could have a better general understanding of how the (SMU) was set up or operated would not be published and it feels like an entire TTP (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures) was sent out in my name giving them a chance to legally persecute me.”
The AP report said the affidavit also cited an alleged exchange between Williams and her mother. In that account, the affidavit quoted Williams as telling her mother, “I might actually get arrested, and I don’t even get a free copy of the book,” and that Williams responded “for disclosing classified information” when asked why she might be arrested.
The Justice Department news release described by AP said investigators, through their review at that point, had identified at least 10 batches of documents Williams intended to provide to the journalist.