NSA Leaker, Reality Winner, Played the Game and Lost

Oh, she of the unfortunate appellation, today the bells of justice toll for thee.

The former NSA contractor, Reality Winner, will serve more than five years in federal prison for a whistleblower stunt that she apparently felt was going to make her some sort of counter-culture celebrity.

I get it. The age of Trump. She wanted to be the hero. The problem is, she was, like far too many millennials, really, really dumb about it.

Prosecutors said that in May 2017, Winner, who was working for the defense contractor Pluribus International Corporation, printed a classified document that showed how Russian military intelligence hacked at least one voting software supplier and had attempted to breach more than 100 local election systems in the days before the November 2016 vote.

And yes, this is actually important information to have, especially in light of what we know about Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.

What she did with the printed copy of classified data was take it straight to a website called The Intercept.

The Intercept posted a story, based on the information in the document, in June 2017.

They didn’t do Winner any favors. They posted an image of the document she slipped them, complete with the watermark, and within an hour of the post, the Department of Justice had announced her arrest.

She has been jailed ever since and in June she pleaded guilty to one felony count of transmitting national security information, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment.

Winner, 26, becomes the first person to be charged under the Espionage Act in the Trump administration.

And yes, the usual leftwing zealots are wailing and rending their garments over Winner’s sentence, suggesting that what she did was an act of bravery and courage, but they say that about everybody that attempts to subvert the system – unless that person has an “R” after their name.

Geez, I really hate partisanship.

What she actually did was threaten to disrupt an ongoing investigation into a foreign government attempting to meddle in our nation’s election. She’s not a hero, and if she was doing it to get at Trump, it didn’t work.

When confronted at her home on that day, Winner immediately confessed to authorities, even without a lawyer present.

Her willingness to admit to it may have spared her the maximum penalty for the crime. Federal prosecutors chose not to pursue the ten year term, but opted for just over half that, with a 63 month sentence.

Winner’s attorneys challenged the lengthy recommended sentence in a court filing last week. “Despite her singular criminal act, as set forth below, the stipulated sentence of 63 months is in excess of many prior Espionage Act cases where the government has prosecuted ‘leakers’ of national defense information, including cases where the factual conduct, and information leaked, was arguably worse,” attorneys wrote.

Free speech advocates have warned that the Trump administration’s use of the Espionage Act – instead of less harsh laws that are crafted to penalize people for leaking government information – in Winner’s case perpetuates the aggressive attacks on whistleblowers seen under Barack Obama’s administration.

Well, that’s the gamble she took, isn’t it?

I get free speech. I like free speech. But this wasn’t a case about free speech. It was a case of a young woman doing the wrong thing and jeopardizing a national investigation for what she thought would be fame and glory.

Play stupid games, get stupid prizes. That’s just how it is.