Reality Winner

On April 24, 2020, a federal judge rejected Winner's request to commute the remaining 19 months of her 63-month sentence and be released to home confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Winner's lawyer argued that her history of respiratory illness and immune system compromised by bulimia makes her highly vulnerable to the virus. Two inmates had tested positive before being transferred to the federal medical center where (under the terms of her June 2018 guilty plea agreement) Winner is housed to meet her special needs; they were immediately quarantined and never entered the general population. The government insisted that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) "has taken aggressive action to mitigate the danger and is taking careful steps to protect inmates' and BOP staff members' health." The judge found that Winner did not exhaust her administrative remedies through the BOP, which he held has sole authority to grant her compassionate release.

An excerpt from Is this a Room was aired in the March 13, 2020 episode of This American Life.

In 2019, The Guardian compared Winner's case to those of Daniel Everette Hale and of Henry Kyle Frese.

In 2019, Tina Satter staged the play Is This a Room, based on the transcript of Winner's interview by the FBI. Is this a Room was given its Dutch premiere at the 2019 Noorderzon Festival in Groningen in the Netherlands, and was further presented in New York City at the Vineyard Theatre later that year.

In December 2019, production of a biopic film about Reality Winner (to be directed by Susanna Fogel) was announced.

Concerns were raised that The Intercept's sloppy handling of the material exposed her as the source and contributed to her arrest. Twice denied bail, Winner was held at the Lincoln County Jail in Lincolnton, Georgia. On August 23, 2018, Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison as part of a plea deal. She now resides in the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Ft. Worth, Texas.

On January 31, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a lower court order blocking Winner from posting bond, determining that no combination of conditions would reasonably assure her presence at trial, thus ensuring that she remains in jail until her trial, which was scheduled to begin on October 15, 2018.

On June 21, 2018, Winner asked the court to allow her to change her plea to guilty and on June 26 she pleaded guilty to one count of felony transmission of national defense information. Winner's plea agreement with prosecutors called for her to serve five years and three months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

On August 23, 2018, at a federal court in Georgia, Winner was sentenced to the agreed-upon five years and three months in prison for violating the Espionage Act. Prosecutors said her sentence was the longest ever imposed in federal court for an unauthorized release of government information to the media. The New York Times reported, "Under the plea agreement, Ms. Winner will be transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she can receive treatment for bulimia and be relatively close to her family."

On June 3, 2017, while employed by the military contractor Pluribus International Corporation, Winner was arrested on suspicion of leaking an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections to the news website The Intercept. The report suggested that Russian hackers had tried to access voter registration rolls in the U.S.

A month after being honorably discharged from the Air Force in November 2016, Winner moved to Augusta, Georgia, where she taught at CrossFit and at a yoga studio. Still possessing a top-secret security clearance, Winner was then hired by Pluribus International Corporation, a small firm that provides services under contract to the National Security Agency. On February 13, 2017, Pluribus assigned her to work at Fort Gordon, a U.S. Army post near Augusta, where she had once been stationed while in the Air Force. Assigned to translate documents relating to Iran's aerospace program from Persian, Winner was employed by Pluribus at the time of her arrest for unauthorized disclosure of Classified documents.

Winner was arrested on June 3, 2017. The U.S. Department of Justice announced her arrest on June 5, shortly after The Intercept published an article describing Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election by hacking a U.S. voting software supplier and sending spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before the November 8 election. The Intercept's story was based on a top-secret May 5, 2017, National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked to them anonymously.

In an 'Affidavit in Support of Application for Arrest Warrant' dated July 5, 2017, FBI Special Agent Justin C. Garrick stated:

On June 3, 2017, your affiant spoke to WINNER at her home in Augusta, Georgia. During that conversation, WINNER admitted intentionally identifying and printing the Classified intelligence reporting at issue despite not having a "need to know," and with the knowledge that the intelligence reporting was Classified. WINNER further admitted removing the Classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the News Outlet, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents.

Winner was charged with "removing Classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet." On June 8, 2017, she pleaded not guilty to a charge of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information", and was denied bail. Prosecutors alleged she may have been involved in other leaks of Classified information, and might try to flee the country if released. The U.S. Justice Department lawyers also argued that her defense team should not be allowed to discuss any Classified information, even if it was in news reports published by the media.

On August 29, 2017, Winner's attorneys filed a motion in U.S. District Court to suppress her statements to law enforcement, arguing that Winner was not read her Miranda rights before being interrogated by the FBI on June 3. On October 5, 2017, Judge Brian Epps denied a second request from her defense attorneys that bail be set. In December 2017, The Intercept reported that Winner's defense team was allowed to discuss the case with her, including its Classified aspects, in a "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility" (SCIF). First Look, the parent company of The Intercept, helped fund her defense.

Journalist Kerry Howley has described Winner during adolescence as shy, intellectually adept, "almost comically mature." Prosecutors characterized her as a person who "hates America" based on private messages with her sister, although Winner served in the United States Air Force for six years and received a commendation in October 2016 for "removing more than 100 enemies from the battlefield."

The sudden loss of her biological father, Ronald, in December 2016 had a devastating impact on Winner's life. Her father's influence early in her life had extensively shaped Winner's worldview on many topics including politics, history, philosophy, and religion. After the September 11 attacks, Winner was encouraged by her father to seek out answers about the geopolitical motivations behind the attacks. She also discussed with him current events such as the Syrian Civil War, and later donated to the White Helmets, volunteers helping civilians caught up in that war. Following military service, Winner applied for jobs with NGOs in Afghanistan, hoping to use her Pashto to dialogue with refugees. However, her search for overseas employment was frustrated by her lack of post-secondary education.

Winner grew up in Kingsville, Texas and was a top-ten GPA 2010 graduate of H. M. King High School, where she learned Latin at school, Arabic in her free time, and played on the soccer and tennis teams.

Winner served in the United States Air Force from 2010 to 2016, achieving the rank of senior airman (an E-4 paygrade) with the 94th Intelligence Squadron.After two years of language and intelligence training, she was posted to Fort Meade, Maryland. She worked as a cryptologic linguist, being fluent in the Persian language and in Dari, the Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan, as well as in Pashto. Assigned to the drone program, she listened in on intercepted foreign chatter to provide U.S. forces with intelligence. Winner was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal for "aiding in 650 enemy captures, 600 enemies killed in action and identifying 900 high[-]value targets."

Reality Leigh Winner (born December 4, 1991) is an American former intelligence specialist. In 2017, she was charged with "removing Classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet". The material in question originated with the National Security Agency (NSA).