Lawyers for former NSA contractor and accused leaker Reality Winner have branded as "scary" what they say are the federal government's efforts to unfairly hobble them by casting a broad, ill-defined blanket of secrecy over information, including published news accounts, they may need for Winner's defense.
Responding to federal prosecutors who last week sought a broad protective order to govern information disclosures, Winner attorneys John Bell and Titus Nichols also objected to a ban that prevents Winner from reviewing classified materials with her lawyers. They contended the prohibition would violate Winner's constitutional rights by preventing her from confronting witnesses or addressing the evidence against her. Prosecutors are seeking as part of Winner's prosecution to limit to people with security clearances the release of classified materials and anything else that "could reasonably be believed to contain classified information."
The defense team also hinted in their pleading, filed Thursday morning in federal court in Augusta, Georgia, at how they intend to defend Winner. She has been charged with espionage a statute her attorneys say is intended to prevent military secrets from being stolen and then handed to enemies of the United States. In 2000, Congress passed a law that would have criminalized the disclosure of classified information. That bill, Winner's lawyers said, was vetoed.
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The charges against Winner stem from a leak to The Intercept, an online news outlet originally founded to publish reports based on information dumps of classified materials from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The leak attributed to Winner was linked to a top secret NSA paper detailing specific efforts on multiple fronts by Russian intelligence to compromise state election systems across the U.S. in the weeks prior to the 2016 election, according to the Intercept report and papers filed in the criminal case. Winner's lawyers contend that "Russian attempts to interfere with our elections are despicable, but whether information about these Russian efforts falls within the scope of information about the secret activities or our Army and Navy that the Espionage Act was enacted to protect is doubtful."
Winner, 25, a U.S. Air Force veteran, was arrested last month and jailed without bond after an online news reporter attempted to verify a classified document that was eventually traced back to Winner, the FBI said in an affidavit filed in the case. At the time, Winner had a top secret security clearance and was employed by NSA contractor Pluribus International Corp. in Augusta.