- Reality Winner, a former US intelligence contractor, has been released from prison.
- Winner was convicted in 2018 of leaking an intel report about Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
- She's now at a residential-reentry facility in San Antonio.
Reality Winner, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, has been released from prison, her attorney announced on Monday.
Winner was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018. She'd been convicted of leaking a report about Russia's meddling in the 2016 US election to The Intercept, a nonprofit publication.
Winner's attorney, Alison Grinter Allen, said on Twitter that Winner had been released into the residential-reentry program through good behavior.
"Her release is not a product of the pardon or compassionate release process," Allen said, "but rather the time earned from exemplary behavior while incarcerated." Allen added that Winner had asked for privacy as she worked to "heal the trauma of incarceration and build back the years lost."
Federal Bureau of Prisons records showed that Winner was at a residential-reentry facility in San Antonio and that she was set to be released from the program on November 23.
Federal authorities arrested Winner and charged her with Espionage Act violations after The Intercept published a report around Winner's leaked files in 2017.
An affidavit said The Intercept had sent a member of the federal government a copy of the report Winner provided. The copy showed that the pages had been "folded and/or creased," meaning someone had printed it before removing it from a classified space, the affidavit said.
Investigators discovered that only six people in the agency had printed the report. They later found that Winner had not only printed it but had contact with The Intercept.