An appeals court denied a request by Reality Winner, who pleaded guilty to leaking classified Russian meddling information to the media, to serve out the remainder of her prison sentence in home confinement because of the coronavirus outbreak.
The National Security Agency contractor, 29, was arrested in June 2017 as the first successful classified leak prosecution by the Trump administration, just after the Intercept published a story stating that “a top-secret National Security Agency report details a months-long Russian hacking effort against the U.S. election infrastructure.” Winner had mailed the NSA document to the outlet in May 2017, and the outlet reached out to the NSA to confirm its authenticity. The FBI and NSA quickly figured out the information had been disclosed by Winner.
Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison in August 2018 after pleading guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining and transmitting national defense information. The former Air Force veteran is imprisoned at the Federal Medical Center prison in Fort Worth, Texas, and her expected release date is Nov. 23, 2021.
Judges Beverly Martin, Robert Luck, and Andrew Brasher of the 11th Circuit upheld the district court’s decision to deny Winner’s request to leave prison early amid the pandemic.
“Ms. Winner argues the District Court abused its discretion when it denied her motion because it refused to hold a hearing and did not properly consider her evidence,” Martin, who wrote the three-judge opinion, ruled, adding that “as this court has held with respect to analogous motions for a reduced sentence … failure to hold a hearing does not constitute abuse of discretion. Therefore, under this court’s precedent, the District Court did not abuse its discretion and we affirm its denial of Ms. Winner’s motion for compassionate release.”
Winner’s lawyer, Joe Whitley, argued in April that she deserved compassionate release, pointing to her bulimia and other ailments, saying that, “in the end, Reality signed up to serve her sentence under the care, custody, and safety of the Bureau of Prisons — she did not agree (nor did this Court require her) to be confined to an institution that was caught unprepared for this virus (having, among other things, run out of hand sanitizer), placed in close quarters with other inmates in a facility that has already been infested by this deadly and contagious disease, literally putting her health and life in danger.”
Chief Judge J. Randal Hall of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Georgia denied Winner’s request in late April, arguing that “even if the Court were to conclude that the First Step Act gave it discretion to consider what constitutes extraordinary and compelling circumstances outside of the Sentencing Commission’s policy statement, Winner would not be afforded the relief she seeks.”
Martin wrote Monday that “Winner’s arguments in seeking compassionate release are best understood in light of the arguments she has made throughout her prosecution and punishment for this crime” and said that “while she advocated for the 63-month sentence she and the government agreed to as a part of their plea negotiations, she argued that a 63-month sentence was higher than ‘the average sentence for charges under the Espionage Act’ and provided the court with a list of others who had been convicted under the same statute, but given lighter sentences.” The judge quoted from Winner’s legal brief, in which her lawyers said Winner suffers from depression and an eating disorder and that her “depleted mental and physical states … make her particularly susceptible to COVID-19.”
The appeals court judge also quoted from the lower court decision, writing, “Winner has not carried the burden of demonstrating that her specific medical conditions under the particular conditions of confinement at FMC Carswell place her at a risk substantial enough to justify early release. [FN 4: The Court would be remiss not to point out Winner’s incongruous complaint that she is at greater risk because of the preventative measures undertaken by the prison in response to COVID-19.] In fact, the Court is constrained to observe that Winner is in a medical prison, which is presumably better equipped than most to deal with any onset of COVID-19 in its inmates.”
Related to Winner’s leak, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a July 2019 report that “Russian government-affiliated cyber actors conducted an unprecedented level of activity against state election infrastructure in the run-up to the 2016” election but found “no evidence” that vote tallies were altered or that voter registry files were deleted or modified by the Russian actors.
Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation concluded the Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.”
When Winner was sentenced to just over five years behind bars in the summer of 2018, President Trump tweeted that it was “small potatoes” in comparison to “what Hillary Clinton did” and told then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that it was a “Double Standard.” Winner is seeking a commutation of her sentence from the president.
