The leaker went to jail for a patriotic, if illegal, act. She has a lot to offer the world if she’s allowed to move on
In late November, Reality Winner – who turned 33 this week – finished her lengthy punishment for sending a government document to a news organization.
It’s past time for her to be pardoned so that she can move on with her life and, particularly, her education. She wants to be a veterinary technician, get a good-paying job and move out of her mother’s Texas house, but having a felony in one’s background doesn’t help with any of that.
“She doesn’t deserve to be punished forever,” her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told me in an interview this week. “You would think that once you’d served your sentence, you’d be okay, but that doesn’t seem to be true.”
A presidential pardon, of course, would help immensely, in removing the scarlet “F” from her record. And Biden, who pardoned his son Hunter just days ago, may find that the time is finally right since this, too, was a politically driven prosecution.
Winner has been treated harshly – scapegoated for an act she intended to be patriotic.
Because Donald Trump wanted to make an example of her, the US air force veteran and former National Security Agency (NSA) translator was hit with the longest prison sentence ever given for leaking government information to the media.
Her crime? She sent an intelligence report about Russian interference in the 2016 elections to the investigative news organization the Intercept; the...
- California DMV sues Tesla over alleged false claims about Autopilot/FSD capabilities, seeking license revocation. - Parallel Miami trial examines if Autopilot caused 2019 pedestrian death; Tesla ...