First Gov’t Leaker Charged Since White House Called For Crackdown

The Trump administration has called for a crackdown on leakers of classified information, and now a 25-year-old intelligence contractor in Georgia has been charged with espionage for sending a top-secret document to the media. Reality Leigh Winner was arrested at her home in Augusta, Ga. about an hour after national-security news outlet The Intercept published the document, allegedly a May 5 intelligence report from the National Security Agency. The document was a report describing two cyberattacks by Russia’s military intelligence unit carried out days before the 2016 election – against a company that sells voter registration-related software, and against 122 local election officials. The Espionage Act carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.