Reality Winner, an Air Force veteran and former contractor for the National Security Agency, was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking a document that exposed Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
A new Rolling Stone article begs the question: Why did she take such a risk?
“The report represented the first evidence that — contrary to the Obama administration’s assurances — the Russian government penetrated systems involved in tallying the 2016 vote,” author Tessa Stuart writes. “Today, we know the federal government was aware as early as January 2017 that voter registration systems in at least seven states — Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas and Wisconsin — were compromised, and systems in an additional 14 states were targeted by Russian hackers before the election. At the time, though, the government had only acknowledged the hackers’ success accessing ‘multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards.’”
Winner, a 25-year-old woman, is responsible for the reveal. Is she an anti-capitalist liberal who wanted to “burn the White House down”? Or is she a veteran who fought for the country — removing more than 100 people from the battlefield — and continued the fight when she thought it was important enough to risk her freedom over?
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