Leaker thanks Trump for tweet’s support

ATLANTA — A former government contractor who leaked a classified report on Russian hacking is now thanking President Donald Trump for tweeting about her case, after she once called him a “soulless ginger orangutan.”

In a Thursday telephone interview from a Georgia jail, Reality Winner told CBS This Morning that Trump’s tweet was a “breath of fresh air” and it made her laugh. Trump tweeted Aug. 24 that Winner’s crime is “small potatoes” compared with “what Hillary Clinton did.” Trump closed the tweet by blasting U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions: “So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.”

In Thursday’s interview, Winner said that “even our commander in chief, President Trump, has kind of come out and said ‘wait a minute. This is really unfair, there’s this double standard here,’ and for that I can’t thank him enough.”

Before her arrest, Winner posted on Facebook that climate change was a more important issue than health care “since not poisoning an entire population seems to be more in line with ‘health’ care, and not the disease care system that people voted for a soulless ginger orangutan to ‘fix.’”

Winner was sentenced to more than five years in prison for mailing the classified material to a news outlet. Prosecutors say it’s the longest sentence ever for a federal crime involving leaks to the news media.