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Reality Winner Sentenced to 63 Months in NSA Leak Case

After accepting a plea deal.

Former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner was sentenced to 63 months in prison for leaking information about Russian election interference to the press. Winner, 26, was arrested last year after authorities found she was “removing classified materials from a government facility and mailing it to a news outlet,” prosecutors said. Her sentence of more than five years is the longest a government leaker has faced, although the maximum penalty in her case was 10 years. Winner pleaded guilty to violating the Espionage Act, which was enacted in 1917 to target foreign spies. Barack Obama was the first president to use the law to target leakers, HuffPost reports. “People automatically hear ‘espionage’ and think she’s a traitor to her country, and I don’t want people thinking that she’s a traitor to the U.S.,” Winner’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told HuffPost in June. “I don’t agree with how the government uses the Espionage Act. She should not be labeled a traitor.”