"Reality Winner" - sounds like an honor bestowed to a winner of "The Bachelorette," not a name, right? Well, apparently it is a name as well, and the person who has that name is in some big trouble. She is accused of leaking classified information to The Intercept, which has led to some charges from the Department of Justice. The federal contractor from Georgia could be facing some serious prison time.
Leaking to The Intercept
Reality Leigh Winner, 25, has been accused of taking classified material from a government facility and choosing to mail it to a news outlet - in this case, The Intercept.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in a release that the process of nabbing the contractor was a short one. While it's clear what the charges are in this scenario, it's not as clear how long of a sentence the Department of Justice would seek in this case.
Reality Winner began her employment at Pluribus International Corporation on February 13, according to the DOJ. Around May 9, she made the decision to remove classified information from the facility that pertained to national defense; according to NBC News, that information came from the NSA and detailed how Russia attempted to hack into voting machines prior to the election in 2016. That document was published by The Intercept on Monday, meaning the arrest was made on the same day that the leak became highly publicized in the media.
What's in a name?
The pressing question in this whole case isn't why the accused decided to leak the information to The Intercept - that will come out in a short manner. The pressing question: was she born with the name Reality Winner, or did she legally change her name at some point? And if so, why that particular name? Did she win a beauty contest in her childhood and decide that she was destined for stardom and victory on the small screen?
Either way, she's going to be facing the music pretty soon. With the leak related to the Russia scandal - which has been reverberating around Washington D.C. since the beginning of the Donald Trump presidency - law enforcement is going to want answers pretty quickly. The fact that Russia allegedly tried hacking into the voting machines is not as damning as it would have been several months ago because it's already common knowledge that Russia tried to influence the election in a myriad of ways. Reality Winner made a mistake, though, making her the day's big loser.
