Reality Leigh Winner: It’s Been 2 Years

When a foreign government is actively attacking our democracy, many would assume it’s safe to say that most Americans would want to know about it and would want it stopped. So I’m sure I’m not the first to tell you, but that’s where we find ourselves now; in the midst of having been attacked and attack efforts still underway on our democracy through disinformation & divisive campaigns. And it’s also said that our future elections will continue to be attacked if our politicians don’t do anything about it.

This information has been blasted at us in all different directions and we know that these attacks have been happening, but is that an excuse to keep letting them happen? For it may not only be Russia launching social media campaigns, working to release candidates’ and political organizations’ information, and using spear-phishing attempts the next time. Senator Sasse-R mentioned that China may also attempt an attack, putting their high tech resources and manpower to work against our voting infrastructure in 2020.

We know what’s going on and we want the attacks on our democracy to end, but the people that are supposed to be representing us and protecting our rights, the same people we elected and pay salaries to so they will take action for us, are doing none of that. In fact, too many feel as though our elected officials are actively suppressing pertinent information from the public, or allowing others to suppress it as they turn a blind eye. They’re deliberately speaking about this spear-phishing information as though they had proof of this attack on our democracy all along. But they didn’t.

The reason we know all this, why we have proof of election interference, is because of the sacrifice one brave whistleblower made when she decided to tell the truth. US Air Force veteran, Reality Leigh Winner, had taken an oath to serve and protect her country. For some time we had known that Russia interfered in our 2016 presidential election, but no one had proof.

Donald Trump, the elected official in our country’s highest office, kept repeating that it was all a big hoax and had even lifted sanctions that were lobbied against Russians for the interference. Trump went even further stating that he believed Vladimir Putin when asked of the interference, of course, Putin denying it. In May of 2017, Reality Winner sent proof of Russian spear-phishing attempts in the election to The Intercept online media organization. The information was out there, and now so was the proof. But horribly, Winner was arrested mere days later, charged with a violation under the Espionage Act.

A Flawed Approach to Justice

Every band of people, every society, every nation has some sort of rules or laws that their citizens are bound by. These rules and laws are created using human logic, which has proven to err. Further, all human logic is not the same, it can vary from human to human, equal only in that it is human logic and not another species’. We also have morals, a person’s inner conscious of right and wrong. Morals are learned, but how they’re interpreted by a person also rests upon the type of personality that human is born with. People are not born intrinsically good or bad, yet in learning how to eat, talk, walk, act in public, and how to live in general, our personalities allow us to be shaped by our environments, good and bad.
The United States’ laws are impacted by our human logic and have molded the way our justice system works, which in turn helps form the way our society acts. Over the past couple centuries, we have needed to add and enforce more laws as new technologies emerge, new crimes have been committed and as some of our citizens have taken corruption to a whole new level.
After the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written, potential new laws were next. The rights of citizens and governments were covered and now it was time to handle some bureaucratic issues. The first bill to be passed into law was an act managing the time and manner of oaths being taken when a person is sworn into Senate or Congress.

This decision was based on a followed logic of a patriarchal society, basically a group of white men calling the shots. This was white male logic. Keep in mind this is not me “taking a shot at the patriarchy.” It’s important to understand because one group of people constructed the laws of the land allowing for their interpretations of laws only, as they think of themselves. Everyone else had to fight for representation.

Pressing forward through the decades, human rights became increasingly more important to address, technologies were constantly being upgraded, and we now had lawyers (mostly white men, again) studying these laws with the intent of using them to their advantage to attain their desired verdict. The jobs of lawyers started taking on more tasks akin to searching for loopholes, than of helping to protect our civil rights and liberties. The courtroom seems to have taken on a sporting ideal with someone always winning a case while the other side loses.

But America is a democracy, we are told we have a voice. So we try to elect officials that will best represent us and the way we feel our society should be governed. The officials we elect then become our new lawmakers, amending and passing laws, in a so-called effort to end corruption and stop criminals from skirting the law. However, the real outcome is just more laws piled up on top of each other in the hopes of covering everything. We are governed by the “web of laws,” and many of us still haven’t realized this isn’t working.

The American people should have been pissed when we heard Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez explain how it’s completely legal for someone to be corrupt and still hold power in the government, that there are no laws to stop this. But while the video of her explaining that went viral, it was forgotten about by the next week and nothing has been done about it.

Let me repeat that. It is legal to be corrupt and still hold power in the US government, yet nothing has been done. Do people just not care?

A Case of Modern Day Misogynistic Oppression in MSM and the DOJ

As a strong advocate of gender equality and women’s rights, I have taken a particular interest in Reality Winner’s plight. I am one of many supporters of Reality and not only have I spoken to other advocates, but I’ve also done some independent research on different aspects of her case in order to understand more. Not quite shocking in the current political times, but the more I learn, the more I am appalled.

I’ve written about Reality’s treatment, and why we should be paying attention. I’ve written about how mainstream media continues to ignore her case, even after reporting on her initial arrest. And I’ve written about how we need to be talking to our government officials and candidates running for office in the upcoming elections about closing the gaps in whistleblower protection laws, and about the use of the Espionage Act against whistleblowers. It would seem that with a case of this magnitude, more people would be paying attention. But due to lack of media coverage, with the exception of various shout outs from big names such as actresses Rosie O’Donnell & Rosanna Arquette , whistleblower attorney and Expose Facts founder Jesselyn Radack, and Thomas Drake, Reality and her family mainly gain supporters one tweet at a time, one Facebook post at a time, and one protest march at a time.

During pre-trial hearings in 2018, a billboard appeared in Georgia, advocating for Reality. Many of her supporters thought this could be a turning point in main stream coverage because Magistrate Epps and Judge Hall weren’t happy with the billboard. Supporters took this chance to spotlight Reality’s silencing as her defense team was even scolded by Epps about this billboard, someone else’s First Amendment Right to Free Speech, that her attorneys had nothing to do with. But still, there was little media coverage, and nothing main stream.

Don’t get me wrong, there have been a few pieces that mentioned “an ex-NSA contractor” and CNN did one piece after she accepted a forced plea deal & had already been transported to FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, but you would think the person that provided proof of Russian election interference in the US, a supposed world super power, would be national, if not global news. However, you would be wrong to assume thats what happened.

Now that I’ve written a few pieces on Reality, I’m starting to see a bigger picture. When I look at what I have written as a whole about her case there seems to be a common denominator that keeps popping up, and I can no longer ignore it. This pattern I’m seeing is what women are currently fighting back against. A pattern that has gone on for decades, nay, centuries, of men having the upper hand. A pattern of women’s oppression & inequality. Sexism hides everywhere, from the darkest corners to right under our noses. And Reality has been up against the full force of it.

Risking Freedom By Telling The Truth

*Updated 2/21/2020*

As we get closer to November, many people are thinking about voting out the corrupt representatives who have plagued our government. Candidates and incumbents alike are pushing campaign ads and sending postcards; some are even knocking on doors. If the committed voter numbers in November are anything like the hype we’re hearing, this will be a voter turnout for the history books. And with the political environment being what it is, we can see why.

News that Russia had hacked into our election systems in 2016 rocked many Americans. The belief that we, the people, have a patriotic duty to vote and take our country back is strong. The feeling of needing to rid our government of the money-hungry representatives who are only in office to line their pockets is overwhelming among any group that talks politics these days. Of course, voting out corruption should be Priority One, but then shouldn’t Priority Two be finding candidates who fit what we want and need as Americans? Are we asking our candidates, who want our votes, everything that we should be asking them? Probably not.

There’s so much going on week to week, and even day to day, that it’s hard to keep up with all the political agendas arising, that we once thought were safe. Because of how busy we are, and how much things change day to day, just because an issue deserves our attention, doesn’t always mean it will receive it. And that is a big mistake.

If there’s one issue that deserves our attention and has been overlooked, it would have to be the one that is pertinent to identifying and alerting the proper authorities, including the general public, of illegal, immoral and corrupt activities within our government. We must vote out & keep out corruption.

This one issue, that has gone largely unspoken until recently is whistleblower protections. Fraud and corruption run through our government like a snake slithering through high grass. It can be hard for the decent high-level government officials to spot, because as corruption succeeds it’s concealed right under their noses. Lower-level officials and private citizens, by contrast, sometimes have an advantage of seeing it from the outside, or a bird’s-eye view.