Reality Leigh Winner: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com

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A 25-year-old federal contract worker from Augusta, Georgia has been charged by the Department of Justice for taking Top Secret materials from her workplace and mailing them to a news outlet.

Reality Leigh Winner was arrested by the F.B.I. on June 3 and appeared in federal court in Augusta on June 5. She was charged with gathering, transmitting or losing defense information that could have been damaging to the U.S. It’s alleged that she took a Top Secret document, copied it and mailed it to a news organization, believed to be a podcast that wasn’t identified by authorities.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Winner Is a Former Member of the Military & Has Posted Anti-Trump Things on Social Media

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Winner was an employee at Pluribus International Corporation based out of Alexandria, Virginia. She was then assigned to a government agency in Georgia. She’s was employed at the facility since February 13 and held a Top Secret security clearance ever since then.

Pluribus is an analytical and engineering service that provides its services to federal, defense, security and the intelligence community. The company has 22 locations across the world, including three in the Republic of Korea. The one located in Georgia is in Fort Gordon.

Prior to working for Pluribus, Winner was an active duty member of the U.S. Air Force. She was in the Air Force as a linguist, and speaks Pashto, Farsi and Dari, her mother told The Guardian’s Jon Swaine.

Notably, Winner didn’t hide her stance on politics. Just one day before the 2016 presidential election, she made a post to Facebook saying “on a positive note, This Tuesday when we become the United States of the Russian Federation, Olympic lifting will be the national sport.”

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2. A Search Warrant Said the F.B.I. Was Tipped off by a Podcast

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According to a search warrant obtained by Heavy, a special agent with the F.B.I. received information that Winner possessed and willfully sent classified information that was believed to result in damage to national security. The agency received the tip from the news outlet that received the document on June 1 saying that it may have received and published classified information. The court document said that the reporting was published by the news outlet May 5.

After launching an investigation, they found that Winner was one of six people who had access to the document in question on her computer. When investigating those six people, authorities found out that Winner had email contact with the news outlet on March 30 and then again March 31 from her personal email account.

In that email, Winner had asked for transcripts of a specific podcast, and a second email confirmed that she had subscribed to the podcast.

She allegedly “printed and improperly removed and transmitted classified information from a defense agency of the U.S. government.”

After she printed the information, she mailed the document to the outlet, and the letter was postmarked with Augusta, Georgia.

Read the full 21-page search warrant request below:

Reality Leigh Winner by Chris on Scribd

The search warrant was eventually granted, and authorities targeted her home and her home, where they believed that evidence of the alleged crime was.

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3. Winner Admitted to Sharing the Classified Information to Authorities During an Interview

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According to the criminal complaint, the F.B.I. executed its search warrant on Winner’s home and vehicle and found evidence that she had shared the classified information.

Read the full criminal complaint in the document below:

Reality Leigh Winner by Chris on Scribd

Authorities arrested her June 3 at her home, and she was subsequently interviewed. Winner admitted to removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office in Georgia, copying it and mailing it to the news outlet. She allegedly told agents that she knew that she wasn’t allowed to share the intelligence reporting that she obtained, and she was aware that using the information for a news report could cause damage to the U.S. by a foreign nation.

Winner was then taken into federal custody, where she remains as she awaits trial.

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4. She Faces 10 Years in a Federal Prison

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Winner is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but faces 10 years in a federal prison if found guilty of the charge.

The charge, “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information” is contained under Chapter 37 of federal law: espionage and censorship. The law went into effect as of February 1, 2010.

The prosecution of Winner is being handled by Julie A. Edelstein of the Department of Justice’s National Security Divisions Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, a news release by the agency said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Solari of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia is also on the case.

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5.She Is From Texas & Lived in Maryland

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Winner didn’t have a past criminal record, and her Facebook profile said that she was born in Kingsville, Texas.

The one thing she had on her record was one citation, issued December 13, 2016, in Howard, Maryland for failing to control her vehicle’s speed on a highway to avoid a collision.

She reportedly went to H.M. King High School and lived in Columbia, Maryland at a time.

The last post on her Facebook on June 2 said: “You are what you love, not who loves you.”

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June 5, 2017 7:02 pm