RALEIGH, N.C. — A U.S. magistrate judge in Raleigh, North Carolina, agreed to release Courtney Williams under home detention and location monitoring while she awaits a possible trial on charges of unlawfully disclosing national defense information. Williams is also barred from having contact with the media or using social media.

Williams, who was arrested the week before the court hearing, is charged with four counts of communicating and disclosing national defense information about a "special military unit" at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Each count carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in prison and monetary penalties.

A criminal complaint in the case was filed more than a week before the hearing and was unsealed on the same day that a grand jury indicted Williams and the Justice Department announced her arrest. According to court documents, Williams was hired as a defense contractor in 2010 and became a Department of Defense employee months later. She worked for the special military unit at Fort Bragg until 2016 and held a top-secret security clearance. An FBI agent's affidavit states that Williams had signed nondisclosure documents regarding classified materials while working for the unit and as she left her job.

The indictment alleges that between 2022 and 2025, Williams had more than 10 hours of phone calls and exchanged hundreds of text messages with author Seth Harp. It further alleges that Williams unlawfully disclosed a cover alias identity issued and owned by the unit, tactics and techniques the unit used to execute covert missions without being detected, and the true names of individuals assigned to the unit and their capture during a sensitive military mission in a foreign country.

The affidavit states that Williams messaged Harp on or about the date of an article's release, expressing concern about the amount of classified information being disclosed. It also states that Williams told her mother she might get arrested for disclosing classified information.

In a written statement, Harp said, "I am confident that the DOJ's slapdash indictment, full of misleadingly juxtaposed quotations taken out of context, will fall apart upon careful scrutiny." He contended that former unit members sometimes reveal unit details incidentally on podcasts and YouTube shows.