Reality Winner went to prison in August 2018 for leaking govt documents. It was once the longest sentence for a crime of that sort. Where is she now?
Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner
It's arduous to believe there is a person in the world named Reality Winner, but that isn't even the most wild a part of this girl's adventure. The former member of the United States Air Force was once thrust into the spotlight after she leaked government paperwork while working as an intelligence contractor for a non-public corporate. Her story is told in the 2023 Max drama Reality, where Euphoria's Sydney Sweeney steps into her good, military-grade shoes. But where is Reality Winner lately? Let's get into it.
Where is Reality Winner now? She's out of prison.
According to The New York Times, Winner was once launched to a halfway house in June 2021 after serving just about 3 years of a 63-month sentence. Her early free up used to be primarily based entirely on excellent habits, now not the "outside advocacy or a compassionate release process," the newspaper reported. While on the halfway space, Winner was able to go out of doors and spend time along with her family and was expected to be moved to home confinement before being fully released from custody via November 2021.
Per NBC News, Winner mentioned she is on probation till November 2024. She "remains prohibited from traveling out of southern Texas, must adhere to a nightly curfew and report any interaction with the media," according to the outlet.
Reality Winner exits the Augusta Courthouse June 8, 2017, in Georgia.
Winner's Instagram bio describes her as a CrossFit coach, dog mother, cat mother, and horse mother lately residing in Kingsville, Texas. In phrases of affection, she is in a dating with a man by means of the title of Eduardo Anjel Rodriguez, with whom she celebrated a yr on May 28, 2023. "Happy belated birthday Eduardo, and happy anniversary," Winner wrote in an Instagram post. "One year of you, and time has flown by! Grateful and blessed to have found you again."
Obviously Instagram is usually well-curated, but if Winner's is to be believed, she's rather glad after her stint in jail. Most of the pictures feature her lifting weights, cuddling together with her canine, or spending time together with her partner. If we needed to describe her existence in one phrase, we'd more than likely land on: content material. And that's content material as in glad, no longer content material as in what we produce on social media.
What did Reality Winner leak?
Per the Department of Justice, Winner used to be charged with "removing classified material from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet." The news outlet in query used to be The Intercept, which was once founded by means of the two reporters who Edward Snowden worked with when he was a whistle-blower aiming to reveal the United States executive's surveillance of Americans as well as foreign voters. The first thing they did was archive Snowden’s paperwork in order to "keep mining them for stories," per The New York Times.
In 2017, a then 25-year-old Winner used to be paying attention to The Intercept's podcast. She was once inspired via their paintings. As she instructed CBS's 60 Minutes in July 2022, "I am somebody who only acted out of love for what this country stands for." As she is a skilled linguist who speaks Farsi, Dari, and Pashto, it was once Winner's task to eavesdrop and record what she heard. "I was starting to see in the news that our mission had a very high civilian casualty rating," she informed 60 Minutes.
Her process in the Air Force began to impact her psychological well being, which ended in despair and bulimia. Eventually Winner left and ended up at the National Security Agency at Fort Gordon in Augusta, Ga., where she overheard deeply distressing knowledge. Winner used to be in a position to verify that Russia was once chargeable for tampering with the 2016 presidential election even supposing Donald Trump was once pronouncing it would have been somebody. "I just kept thinking, 'My God, somebody needs to step forward and put this right. Somebody.'"
Winner published out the highest secret file that mentioned such things as the Russian navy "executed cyber espionage [against 122] local government groups," "targeting officials involved in the management of voter registration systems," per CBS News. Winner was once unable to speak for herself at her trial, but when requested by way of 60 Minutes what she would have said, the previous NSA worker was transparent about her emotions.
Winner mentioned she leaked the paperwork because she "thought this was the truth." She also knew that this knowledge wasn't going to any actual harm. If anything, it used to be intended to help. "It only filled in a question mark that was tearing our country in half in May 2017. And that I meant no harm," she mentioned.
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