Nikita Khrushchev vowed that Russia would take over this country without firing a shot and they got very close to doing just that by sabotaging the 2016 election and getting their useful idiot, Donald Trump, in the White House. 60 Minutes ran an interview with Reality Winner Sunday night. Winner worked for the National Security Agency. They knew that Russia had interfered with the 2016 election, even though Donald Trump was crowing, “Could have been Russia. Could have been China. Could have been a lot of people.” Yeah, right.
Winner thought at the time, “Somebody needs to step forward and put this right. Somebody.”
She was that somebody. Winner sent a top secret document indicating that in 2016 the Russian military executed cyber espionage against over 100 U.S. government organizations, targeting officials involved in the management of voter registration systems. Winner exposed a White House coverup by sending a Top Secret classified document to a news website that exposes government misdeeds. She was immediately caught, tried and convicted of espionage in 2018 and sentenced to five years, three months in prison. She was released in June of 2021.
She also made the 2018 elections possible, because what she did was get the Federal Elections Assistance Commission on alert. They disclosed the Top Secret email addresses used by the attackers.
The Commission called for full disclosure of election security intelligence and that secured the 2018 election. This heroic young woman with a moral compass made out of adamantium may have saved democracy, while Donald Trump was busy selling it out — and the same night her interview airs, he’s on Fox News bragging about firing the head of the FBI and committing obstruction of justice.
Scott Pelley: You knew it was stamped "Top Secret." You knew what that meant.
Reality Winner: …I knew it was secret. But I also knew that I had pledged service to the American people. And at that point in time, it felt like they were being led astray. https://t.co/DQ3COh0VTm pic.twitter.com/dy1IdCM7Wo
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) December 6, 2021
Led astray and down the primrose path, absolutely. She “filled in a question mark that was tearing our country in half, in May, 2017.” That was the fact that the sitting president of the United States had just fired the director of the FBI because he, James Comey, wouldn’t play ball with Donald Trump.
Hit this link to hear the entire 13 and a half minute interview. Winner is in tears at one point because she said that her conviction lumped her in with terrorists, groups that she had enlisted in the Air Force to fight. The true terrorist in this story was and still is the portly orange man who resided at the White House at the time that Winner decided to do the right thing, at tremendous personal cost.
Her mother bottomed lined it: “What Reality did was not espionage. What Reality did was patriotism. She actually stood up and worked for the American people to give us the truth about an attack on our vote, an attack on our democracy, an attack on our country. ”
We are extraordinarily lucky that there are such people as Reality Winner, Alexander Vindman and others who were willing to truly put America first, in a real way, not the stupid MAGA cliche jingle. They did the right thing for their country, at tremendous personal cost. They are truly an inspiration. Their stories are also cautionary tales to show how close we came to losing this republic and how democracy should never be taken for granted. On the other hand, on the bright side, their stories reveal the tremendous power inherent in just one person doing the right thing.
The takeaway here is that vigilance is the price of liberty. May we never forget it.
In a different country – say Russia – she’d never be seen again. We’re still in a very precarious position. Russia continues to infiltrate from within the gov’t and social media, and then GQP idiots (Fux, et al) are in lockstep with the propaganda. Maga mofo’s swallow the poison instead of realize they’re being had. Keep us all distracted and they’ll take over the Ukraine – easy peasy.
“We are extraordinarily lucky that there are such people as Reality Winner, Alexander Vindman and others…”
Let’s not forget Edward Snowden, who is still in exile.
No thanks to Grinnin’ Barry and his sidekick, the Demented Grabby Joe.
This is total fiction. There is no evidence to back up the claims in the document Reality Winner leaked. If it were true, the NSA would have given it to its Russophobic acolytes in the media. Repeat, there is ZERO evidence that the poor foolish ironically named Winner leaked a document that told any truth. The states whose voting systems were apparently compromised denied it happened. And shame on you for promoting this fiction. And BTW the Justice Dept investigation has already proved (and indicted some liars) that the claim of Russian interference in the 2016 fiction didn’t happen. Instead of promoting this and other lies, why don’t you provide some evidence?
You’re the one that’s wrong. Yes, a couple of people faced charges but not over making shit up about Russian efforts. Russia DID in fact attempt to penetrate voting systems and did in some states get into voter records although it doesn’t seem like they did much. Then again, with team Trump overseeing things and some of those states (including the one where I live where Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans and Independents have been split, veering a bit back & forth in recent cycles) being heavily gerrymandered into almost or sometimes veto proof GOP control how hard did states themselves look? Oh well. As for your comments on DOJ you are so far off the mark as to be laughable if the matter wasn’t so serious.
There was plenty of evidence of conspiring with Russia in the public domain. Of course, fleshing it out and developing criminal cases especially when intelligence gathering methods have to be protected takes time and serious committed effort. Enter Rod Rosenstein who everyone wondered why he got to stay in his job. Publicly it looked like he was protecting the investigation into Trump and his campaign. Privately however he was PROTECTING Trump and the campaign. Both publicly and behind the scenes he talked out both sides of his ass. Early on he changed Mueller’s mandate, and told him the FBI’s counterintelligence folks would look into Trump’s team conspiring with Putin/Russia. BUT, he told FBI Director Chris Wray that Mueller’s people would be handling that! So in the end stuff was only tangentally explored. Manafort was convicted on other stuff.
Trump’s DOJ protected Trump. He had willing partners at the top willing to turn it into his personal defense firm. The motherfucker is a goddamned traitor, and so are Rosenstein and others at DOJ who protected him including and especially Bill Barr who short-stopped the Mueller investigation, then grossly mischaracterized its findings and then did everything he could to bury it so that unlike all prior IC/Independent Counsel investigations the details would never see the light of day.