The former National Security Agency contractor jailed for leaking top-secret documents on Russia’s efforts to hack the 2016 election thanked President Trump on Thursday for calling her five-year sentence “unfair.”
“I just can’t thank him enough for finally saying what everybody has been thinking for 16 months,” Reality Winner told “CBS This Morning” by phone from Lincoln County Jail in Georgia.
On Friday, President Trump tweeted about Winner’s case writing, “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.”
The not-so-lucky Winner said the tweet “really made me laugh.”
“I don’t like to assume anything as to what’s going on in his head,” she said when asked if she believed she had the president’s support. But, “the ‘small potatoes’ was a breath of fresh air.”
Prior to her arrest, she’d railed against President Trump, calling him a “soulless ginger orangutan” and said she wanted to “burn the White House down.”
The 26-year-old, who worked as a translator at the NSA’s office in Augusta, GA, copped to one count of transmitting national security information as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in June.
She was sentenced last week to five years behind bars – the longest ever imposed for a federal crime involving a leak of classified material to the media.
Winner said she “deeply” regretted leaking the documents.
The classified materials she sent to The Intercept detailed how the Russian government had tried to penetrate a Florida-based supplier of voting software and the accounts of election officials ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The former Air Force linguist said she felt “vindicated” watching the Russia investigation from behind bars but said it was “also frustrating.”
“I know that had I been out and allowed some kind of opinion about it I would be doing my due diligence as a citizen, contacting my senators, but as it is I’ve just been behind bars kind of a spectator, kind of a sounding box,” Winner said.
She has been locked up without bail for the past year and is awaiting transfer to a federal prison.