According to multiple media reports, Bruhl-Daniels met Diya in Dubai in 2016 while working at the US consulate there. She had been a special agent for nine years and had top-security clearance with access to sensitive information on some subjects.
Diya was trying to get a tourist visa to visit the United States. Court documents say that Bruhl-Daniels contacted officials at the State Department and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who informed her that both the DHS and FBI had their eyes on Diya in a counterterrorism probe.
Bruhl-Daniels, despite being told to "Stay away from Diya," went on to form a romantic relationship with him and told him that if he came to the US he would be arrested.
The criminal complaint against her says that Diya furnished her with lavish gifts, including a big birthday party in Dubai that State Department and active duty Navy members came to, loans to vacation in Greece, a job at his company for her son, a gold bracelet and a massage.
Bruhl-Daniels said she paid him back for the $1,400 loan with booze.
In various messages to Diya, Bruhl-Daniels wrote that she was "deeply attracted" to him and assured him she was trying to sway federal officials to find him innocent. Diya had "some associates that are well known" to investigators, she said, telling him that she offered no more information to authorities besides what she believed would be exonerating. "I gave them no more than what I could to emphasize your innocence," she said, court documents allege.
NCIS agents confronted her about those messages in May. She said she didn't remember sending them but they were "pretty damn bad,"
Diya was charged in Texas in September after he was caught in the US with fake identification papers that said he came from South America.
Bruhl-Daniels was represented by a public defender when she appeared in court in Alexandria, Virginia, which borders Washington, DC, on Wednesday for a detention hearing.