Arrested and Charged
Photo credit: Washington Examiner It looks like President Trump was right once again. The President has consistently stated that there were leaks somewhere in the federal government, leaks that pose a serious threat to national security. On Monday, the Department of Justice arrested and charged 25-year old Reality Leigh Winner (yes that’s her real name) for providing classified documents to an online news outlet.
The Daily Caller reported:
Reality Leigh Winner is accused in the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Georgia, of “removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet,” the Justice Department said. Winner, who lives in Augusta, has worked for Pluribus International since Feb. 13, according to the complaint. She held a Top Secret clearance.
Court documents allege that Winner “printed and improperly removed” classified intelligence documents, which contained national defense information. She then passed on the information via mail to the online liberal news outlet The Intercept. While the news outlet was not named in the complaint, NBC News revealed that The Intercept did receive the leaked documents.
According to DCNF, the FBI interviewed Winner at her home over the weekend, where she admitted to stealing and leaking the documents. She acknowledged that “she intentionally identified and printed” classified information despite not having a…
Need to Know
Photo credit: The Intercept
The young woman also admitted she knew that the intelligence reporting was classified. Per the complaint, she took the documents from her office space and then sent them to the news outlet which she knew was not authorized to “receive or possess” the documents. The U.S. agency, also not named in the complaint notified the FBI of the breach on June 1.
Reports also indicated that The Intercept had contacted the agency the day before and said that it was in possession of documents it believed were authored by the agency. Winner was caught through an internal audit, which found that she had accessed the document on her computer and had been emailing the news outlet. No court date has been set.
