Lincoln County, Georgia, Sheriff
Reality Leigh Winner, a former defense contractor who was the first person prosecuted by the Trump administration for allegedly leaking to reporters, pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday in a deal with prosecutors that requires her to serve just over five years in prison.
The 26-year-old admitted she unlawfully retained and disseminated defense intelligence information, a charge that carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence. Her plea deal must still be approved at a future hearing by a federal judge in Augusta, Ga. No sentencing date has been set.
Winner, a former Air Force linguist who lived in Augusta, was a contractor last year with Pluribus International Corp. assigned to the National Security Agency. In May 2017, she printed a secret report on Russian hackers and mailed it to the Intercept, an online news outlet that later published the document, according to court papers and people familiar with the matter.
The report concluded that Russian spies broke into computers of a U.S. company “to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions.”
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