Biden’s Refusal to Pardon Reality Winner Underscores Taboo on Questioning Electoral Integrity
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Supporters of U.S. Air Force veteran and former NSA contractor Reality Winner made a last ditch effort last week to lobby outgoing President Joe Biden to pardon Winner for her 2017 violation of the 1917 Espionage Act. The “Reality Is Us!” campaign highlights how the young misfit from a Texas border town “showed America the proof that Russia hacked into our voter data right before the 2016 election, and certain government officials knew about it, but denied it ever happened. For calling that B.S. she was sent to prison for 5 years.”
Reality Winner’s crime against the state? Leaking a classified intelligence report that acknowledged the reality of Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election to The Intercept, an investigative news site that published a story about it. The leaked report indicated that hackers from Russian military intelligence had perpetrated a cyberattack on at least one American voting software supplier, sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials shortly before the election, and that the hacking operation may have penetrated deeper into American voting systems than had been previously understood.
Uncle Sam hates whistleblowers of any kind and has been waging a bi-partisan war on intelligence community whistleblowers. The Obama administration famously prosecuted more whistleblowers under the outdated Espionage Act than all previous administrations combined. It’s to be expected that whistleblowers will be prosecuted harshly to discourage others from doing so. But Winner’s case is a relatively unique one of a patriotic American merely attempting to warn her fellow citizens that our government wasn’t telling the whole truth when it came to troubling questions about the integrity of the 2016 election.
It will be interesting to see if former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — nominated by Trump to serve as Director of National Intelligence – will continue pushing for reform of the Espionage Act, as she did with proposed legislation in 2020 that would enable defendant to discuss intent and add a defense of disclosure in the public interest (which Winner was not allowed to do.) Gabbard’s been flipping all over since jumping the shark from Bernie Sanders supporter to MAGA member though, so civil rights supporters probably shouldn’t get their hopes up.
Hollywood producer and activist Scott Budnick (best known as an executive producer of The Hangover) makes an effort to humanize Reality Winner in a recent biopic titled Winner, released in 2024 and soon streaming on Hulu in February. The film focuses more on Winner’s quirky life story leading up to her decision to leak the report, rather than the aftermath. In doing so, it provides a compelling picture of how Winner doesn’t pose a threat to anyone except political elitists who don’t like how she pulled the curtain back on the vulnerability of our electoral system.
“What got me excited about this script is that it was told as a comedy… The twist was you’re telling a movie that could be a straight drama about election interference and threats to our democracy, but you’re telling it as a coming of age comedy which I thought was really smart,” Budnick told Counterpunch. “As someone that’s worked with people in the criminal justice system for a long time, everything to me is about humanizing them… Crime is scary, but as soon as you start looking at them as human beings, people’s opinions start to change. And so I really loved the fact that they told this as a comedy and that’s what I latched on to.”
Winner’s charm as a patriotic animal lover and down to earth fitness freak makes it more difficult for Uncle Sam to paint her as a national security threat. Democrats spent much of Trump’s first term raising a ruckus about alleged Russian interference. Yet when actual evidence came to light in the report that Winner leaked, there were few who defended her courageous action.
“Let’s stop having her have to deal with being a felon and having a criminal record stop her from doing all types of things she wants to do, stop her from starting businesses she wants to start, and not being able to get professional certifications she needs,” Budnick said regarding the pitch to Biden. “I see her as a hero, I see her as somebody that let us know that a hostile foreign power was trying to interfere with our democratic process. I don’t believe in punishing heroes.”
Budnick says he hopes the film will inspire Americans to take a longer look at these electoral integrity issues. Biden could have given Winner her life back with a pardon, but didn’t since her real crime in Uncle Sam’s eyes is surely how she dared to violate the unspoken taboo of shining a light on the vulnerability of our electoral system. This sacred cow has been increasingly problematic since the advent of electronic voting systems that are potentially vulnerable to bad actors with inside connections and access.
There was reasonable suspicion that the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio, twice as galling after the Supreme Court gave Dubbya the 2000 election by stopping the Florida recount. Ohio was still a Purple bellwether state that could go either way back then, before the brain drain problem that turned it Red for Trump. 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry would later admit that he harbored suspicions about what went down, but chose not to raise them out of alleged fear that doing so would only toss the decision back to the Supreme Court again.
Rolling Stone published a troubling story in 2006 detailing the array of dirty tricks that Republicans utilized in Ohio, an article now ironic for being authored by shark jumper Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ”You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble… You cannot say: By the way, there’s something wrong with our electoral system,” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann told Rolling Stone at the time, alluding to grief he received from his corporate editorial overlords for attempting to pursue issues raised in the story.
Olbermann’s words have resonated ever since and seem the most likely explanation for why Biden didn’t pardon Winner. This only further tarnishes Biden’s tainted legacy as the man who helped enable the Trump regime’s return to power. Biden’s inaction sadly includes having allowed shady Attorney General Merrick Garland to suspiciously slow walk prosecution of Trump and his seditionist cronies for their actions in the insurrection of January 6, 2021. This is another aspect of Biden’s legacy that will live in infamy.
“Under Biden, the United States became the first country to face an attempted coup and not only fail to punish the coup plotters but allow them to hold office and make laws. There is no parallel in world history,” bestselling author and investigative journalist Sarah Kendzior lamented in 2023. Kendzior would go on to again outline Garland’s longtime role as one of the “Servants of the Mafia State” that has corrupted the Justice Department. But such deeper truth doesn’t make it into an increasingly consolidated mainstream media that exists to maintain the corporatocracy status quo.
Like the Greek prophet Cassandra, Kendzior and Winner have seen their concerns go largely unheeded by the Democratic Party. What’s left of American Democracy is now in critical condition and Reality Winner will continue to pay the price for merely trying to warn us, since Joe Biden once again proved he was either too cowardly or too complicit to do the right thing.
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