Reality Leigh Winner (seriously?), 25, is a federal contractor and was arrested over the weekend. She’s been accused of leaking a top secret report on Russian hacking efforts during the 2016 presidential election.
Winner appeared in the U.S. District Court in Augusta, GA to face one charge of removing classified material from a government facility. She then mailed the material to a news outlet.
Judge Andrew Napolitano said that Winner leaking the report the The Intercept is probably an act of espionage.
“It’s the same espionage that some of us said Hillary Clinton committed by failure to safeguard state secrets,” Napolitano said.
“We now know that the Russians materially and substantially attempted to affect the outcome of local state and national elections,” Napolitano said. “In this instance, it had nothing to do with the Trump campaign.”
“To me, she’s closer to Snowden than she is to being a traitor,” he said. “She revealed a level of Russian interference with our democratic system and our incompetence in keeping the Russians out that is so substantial we the voters and the people have a right to know about it.”
However, he also argues that it proves the NSA KNEW The Russians were, in fact, trying to alter the outcome of the election and essentially did nothing about it.
