By now, readers may be aware that a 25-year-old contractor to the National Security Agency (NSA) has been charged with leaking classified information to liberal website The Intercept, an outlet that has in the past published data from whistleblowers. Alarmingly, the leaks detail Russian intelligence efforts to hack into the systems and email accounts of companies and persons associated with the November 2016 elections. But before readers’ stomachs drop at this revelation, several things should be made clear:
- No firm conclusions can be drawn by the leaks in terms of what hackers were able to compromise or access.
- The NSA’s conclusions are intelligent guesses, rather than being based on absolute proof
- Even if the hackers were able to affect voting tallies (more on this below), President Trump’s 74-electoral-vote victory over Hillary Clinton remains too high a barrier to overcome assuming worst possible scenarios.
There’s also mounting evidence that the leaker in question is a liberal nutcase with obvious progressive leanings and a deep affection for Socialist Bernie Sanders (tendencies we’ve seen recently with the case of the man who stabbed two Good Samaritans in Portland, Oregon).
First things first — the information leaked from the NSA consists merely of analysis documents and does not include raw sources. One must take into account that the intelligence community often makes incorrect guesses and assessments from raw data as it memorably did in 2003 when Colin Powell presented flawed findings to the United Nations in arguing the case for the U.S.’s use of force in Iraq later that year. The contractor in this case, whose somewhat unbelievable name of Reality Winner (reportedly bestowed on her by her father) only further undermines her story, is an extremely colorful character who’s an active member of the U.S. Air Force.
Ms. Winner’s specialty is translation, and she speaks at least four languages, including Farsi, Dari, Pashto and English. She was employed at a company called Pluribus International in Augusta, Georgia, which is known to be a contractor for the NSA.
While Winner thought she was doing the world (or perhaps just the Democrats) a favor in leaking these documents, she was clearly naive in thinking that The Intercept’s publishing them wouldn’t readily lead the NSA back to her. In fact, that’s exactly what it did, and she was summarily arrested on June 3.
Since then, excerpts of her social media accounts have been published in the press to much fanfare. They reveal a personality that appears to be borderline paranoid schizophrenic and certainly extremely partisan, traits that would seem to disqualify her for work requiring a Top Secret government clearance.
Winner has also been shown in a wide variety of pictures, which depict her variously as a buff female bodybuilder, a gun enthusiast, a uniformed Air Force specialist and a blond girl-next-door. Here are some of the messages Winner tweeted in the last year:
“@kanyewest you should make a shirt that says, “being white is terrorism”
“@AnonymousPress what happened to the Feb 28th call for Trump to resign?”
“@jeffsessions #Congrats on being confirmed as #ConfederateGeneral #SNLSessions”
“@realDonaldTrump the most dangerous entry to this country was the orange fascist we let into the White House”
[Toward Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif] “@JZarif There are many Americans protesting U.S. govt aggression towards Iran. If our Tangerine in Chief declares war, we stand with you!”
“Burn crosses, not flags #MakeAmericaGreatAgain”
“Trump derangement syndrome: noun; a radical idea that big corporations shouldn’t be running America as a tool for their own profit.”
“This is not the week to remain silent. #BlackLivesMatter”
“#notmypresident #Recount2016”
[In response to President Trump’s travel ban] “Have you ever even met an Iranian?”
[In response to the 2016 election results] “Well. People suck.” and “What the heck. #betrayed #disillusioned”
She later re-tweeted Bernie Sanders’ claims that Trump is both racist and xenophobic.
Her Facebook postings aren’t much more admirable. Sample posts include
[Trump is] “a soulless ginger orangutan”
[Global warming] “is the single greatest threat we face”
“Not one person alive under the age 27 has lived through a cooler than average month. The levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is going to reach 409 parts per million this year, increasing at a rate twice as fast as predicted. If its concentration keeps rising at this rate, it will double compared with pre-industrial times well before the end of the century. IMHO, this issue is a wee bit more pressing than jobs or even health care.”
“Repeat after me: In the United States of America, in the year 2017, access to clean, fresh water is not a right, but a privilege based off of one’s socio-economic status.”
“On people leaving Augusta [Georgia] for Master’s week: They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
“On a positive note, this Tuesday when we become the United States of the Russian Federation, Olympic lifting will be the national sport.”
On YouTube, Winner blasted President Trump for his proactive support of the North Dakota Pipeline (NoDAPL), claiming, “You have got to be s***ing me right now. No one has called? The White House shut down their phone lines. There have been protests for months, at both the drilling site and outside the White House. I’m losing my mind. If you voted for this piece of s*** [Trump], explain this. He’s lying.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has indicated that Winner can expect little mercy from the Department of Justice in her case; the Trump administration likely looks at this matter with very little sympathy. But the case of Winner may be merely a sideshow to what’s been revealed and the implications it may have for the Democrats’ witch hunt involving Russian hacking and/or collusion as regards the 2016 election.
While the NSA document makes clear that the hacking didn’t interfere with electronic systems that keep track of voting tallies, the hackers apparently may have accessed systems containing voter registration information managed by a company called VR Systems. But before one jumps to any conclusions, they should be aware that all voting is local; typically, voter registration is managed at a local level, so even if hackers were able to alter any information in an extreme way (and voters were consequentially not able to vote in large numbers — which was not reported), the possible effects on election outcomes would have been minimal.
Where conservatives can really breathe easier is that VR Systems’ contracts are only in eight U.S. states: West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Florida and California. Of those states, Clinton lost four — Florida, Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia. Even if one assumes the absolute worst case possible — that somehow hackers were able to affect enough voter registration information to significantly alter outcomes in those four states (an incredibly high hurdle that most analysts say is next to impossible), the total electoral votes that could have shifted to Trump would have been 60. Trump’s victory over Clinton was by 74 electoral votes. Therefore, even if this alleged interference could be proven to have had the greatest possible effect, the outcome of the election would not change.
What should worry conservatives, however, is how this information was obtained and if any other intelligence agencies might be able to produce similar documents alleging more hacking. Already, some doubts about the veracity of this information have already been presented by some intelligence analysts and not least of which by Russian President Vladimir Putin in a June 4 interview conducted by NBC’s Megyn Kelly.
In that discussion, Putin completely denied state involvement with any election interference. However, he conceded that Russian hackers with “patriotic leanings” might have made efforts independent of any government direction. But in this case, the NSA claims absolutely that the hackers in question were employees of Russia’s General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), meaning that the NSA essentially believes that Putin was lying through his teeth to Megan Kelly.
Conservatives should also be worried that Infowars’ Alex Jones has previously stated that Democrats would likely try to present evidence of Russian hacking of the election itself, despite government officials (including former President Obama) denying at the time that the Russians were involved in any way with tinkering with the 2016 results. The dark goal of this evidence would be to try and create enough doubt about the outcome to cause the election to be held all over again.
While this would be unprecedented, to say the least, the recent media appearances by Hillary Clinton, with a litany of excuses about why she lost, especially her pointing the finger at Russian hacking, should concern any and all voters who lean Republican.
While it’s true that President Trump is in charge of the new administration and all department heads report to and in many cases have been appointed by him, their underlings and rank-and-file employees at various agencies such as the NSA and other intelligence branches are a very mixed bunch and count among them dubious turncoats such as Reality Winner. If globalists were to offer these people enough money, can they bribe them to come up with fake evidence à la the Iraq War UN presentations?
It’s also worth noting that some YouTube video uploaders believe Reality Winner is not who she says she is, and with a name like that, it’s not hard to wonder why. Other observers have mused that murdered Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich had leaked information to WikiLeaks, rather than the Russians, and so the case of Winner could be an attempt by the Democrats or Hillary Clinton to put the Russian interference story back on track.
Certainly, the direction all of this is going in is murky, to say the least, and it’s likely we haven’t heard the last of Winner, who conservatives can only hope will become one of the larger losers in history via this story.
