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Suspected NSA Leaker Visited Senator's Office to 'Discuss Environmental Issues'

Reality Leigh Winner is accused of having leaked a top secret document to The Intercept.
Image: Facebook

The world is quickly learning more than we ever thought we'd need to know about a 25-year-old named Reality Leigh Winner, including that she has spent time in the office of Senator David Perdue earlier this year.

Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor, has been arrested and accused of leaking a top-secret document on possible Russian influence on the 2016 election, which The Intercept published yesterday.

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On Winner's Facebook page, a photo from February 14 of this year shows her posed outside of the office of Senator David Perdue, a Republican senator from Georgia and the first cousin of Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, with the caption "A great American once told us to go out and have conversations with one another. #luckyscarf." The photo is tagged with the address "191 Peachtree Tower," although it's likely Winner meant to tag 191 Peachtree Street, the Atlanta location of Perdue's constituency office.

Motherboard reached out to Perdue's office to find out why Winner was visiting the senator. They told us it was a typical constituent meeting.

"Our team meets with hundreds of Georgians monthly to discuss issues important to them," said a spokesperson for Perdue. "In February, Ms. Winner met with our state team to discuss environmental issues. The allegations against Ms. Winner are very serious, and if true, directly threaten our national security. I trust our Justice Department will get to the bottom of this and handle it appropriately."

Winner's social media accounts feature a number of posts about environmental topics and climate change issues, and she also posted a draft of a letter in opposition of the Keystone XL pipeline addressed to Perdue's state policy director, Martha Zoller.

Winner is charged with gathering, transferring, or losing defense information. She allegedly told investigators that she was the one who shared the document with journalists.