In a series of tweets taking aim at Attorney General Jeff Sessions early Friday morning, President Donald Trump appeared to side with former NSA contractor Reality Winner, who was sentenced on Thursday to more than five years in prison for sharing classified information with an online news outlet last year.
Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over “classified” information. Gee, this is “small potatoes” compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018
Trump argued Winner’s offense was “small potatoes” compared to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The Justice Department prosecuted Winner, 26, in the administration’s first use of the Espionage Act.
In June, the former Air Force translator pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting national security information, having printed a classified report and smuggled it out of the NSA’s office in Augusta, Georgia, in her pantyhose when she left work one day, before mailing it to a publication in 2016. The Justice Department announced her arrest on June 5, 2017, about an hour after the Intercept published a classified NSA report about Russian election interference operations during the 2016 campaign.
Prosecutors said Winner’s 63-month sentence, agreed to as part of a plea deal, is the longest sentence that has been issued on the federal level for leaking sensitive information. “Winner’s purposeful violation put our nation’s security at risk,” United States Attorney Bobby L. Christine told reporters after the sentencing, wrote the New York Times. Christine added that its publication caused “exceptionally grave” damage to national security.
Critics of the U.S. government’s approach say that the sentence is excessive. “Reality Winner’s courage and sacrifice for the good of her country should be honored, not punished,” Betsy Reed, editor-in-chief of the Intercept, said in a statement. “Selective and politically motivated prosecutions of leakers and whistleblowers under the Espionage Act — which dramatically escalated under Barack Obama, opening the door for the Trump Justice Department’s abuses — are an attack on the First Amendment that will one day be judged harshly by history.”
In his tweet, Trump seemed to agree, arguing that Winner’s sentence was “So unfair, Jeff, Double Standard.”
It was unclear whether Trump, who Winner previously described on social media as “a soulless ginger orangutan,” knew about her background or the nature of the information she leaked.
