After a year of duking it out in federal court over allegations that she leaked top-secret government intelligence, former National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner has agreed to a plea deal. 
 
 “I do know that she has always been ready and willing to accept responsibility for any wrongdoing, and that she will accept the consequences,” her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told The Atlanta-Journal Constitution on Thursday. 
 
 Documents show the agreement was received by the court on Thursday after an 18-minute conference call on Wednesday with U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps. 
 
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 Winner-Davis, who has maintained a social media presence highlighting her daughter’s case, said she has spoken only briefly to Reality’s attorneys about the change in plea, and only in guarded terms. She said she did not know what charges her daughter would plead to or what the negotiated punishment would be. 
 
 Reality Winner will accept responsibility for any wrongdoing & is ready to accept the consequences. We will continue to support her. She is a true patriot & hero. 
 
 Reality Winner Reaches Plea Deal With Government Over Leaked Document https://t.co/E23gQI2hEz via @DailyReport — Billie J. Winner-Davis (@bjwinnerdavis) June 21, 2018 
 
 Charged under the federal Espionage Act, Winner faced 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines. Her trial had been scheduled for Oct. 15. 
 
 Winner, a 26-year-old former U.S. Air Force linguist who grew up in rural Texas, is accused of leaking a top-secret government report about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. At the time, she worked as an NSA contractor at Fort Gordon, near Augusta. The Intercept, the online news outlet that allegedly received the document, has since admitted some fault in its handling of the leaked report, which court records say led investigators to Winner’s door. 
 
 Winner’s case has attracted international attention, garnering impassioned support from the left and rebuke from the right. Since her arrest, her family and an assortment of support groups have waged a protracted battle in the court of public opinion, speaking out to news reporters, penning articles in The Intercept, and operating the site StandWithReality.org. 
 
 Earlier this month, the federal judge who would have presided in her case admonished attorneys not to speak publicly about the case after a billboard went up in the Augusta suburbs portraying Winner as an imprisoned hero and the federal government as her oppressor. 
 
 Winner-Davis speculated that the Espionage Act — which takes only the underlying act of leaking into account, not motive or mitigating circumstances — was too difficult to fight. Her daughter’s legal team suffered one defeat after another in rulings handed down by the judge, and Epps declined to release Winner from jail while her charges were pending. 
 
 “I’m not happy about it,” Winner-Davis said of the plea deal. “I still feel like the espionage charge is wrong. I feel like it’s harsh. I feel like it doesn’t allow a defendant to defend themselves.” 
 
 Whatever happens in court next week, she said she will continue to fight to clear her daughter’s name: “Regardless of what she’s been charged with, she’s not a traitor to this country.” 
 
 One of Winner’s attorneys, Titus Nichols, declined to comment other than to confirm a change of plea hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. A federal prosecutor also declined to comment. 
 
 This will mark the second guilty plea in Trump’s anti-leak drive. In April, former FBI Special Agent Terry Albury pleaded guilty to one count of making an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawful retention of national defense information. He faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison per count. 
 
 Under President Barack Obama’s administration, leak cases often ended with pleas to minor offenses. A former NSA official in 2011 pleaded guilty in Maryland to one misdemeanor count of exceeding his authorized use of an NSA computer. The Justice Department agreed to drop 10 more serious previous criminal charges against Thomas Drake, who was sentenced to probation. He was accused of discussing classified information with a Baltimore Sun newspaper reporter. That reporter wrote stories about problems with NSA’s secret surveillance programs. 
 
 In 2012, former CIA officer/counter-terrorism official John Kiriakou pleaded guilty to a single charge of disclosing classified information to a journalist. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison after being accused of identifying an undercover operative involved in the use of waterboarding during the Bush administration. He says he was sent to prison for revealing torture. 
 
 In 2015, retired Gen. and former CIA director David H. Petraeus pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified materials and was sentenced to 2 years of probation and a $100,000 fine. He admitted giving handwritten journals with classified information to his mistress and then lying about it to the FBI. He had been charged with felonies but refused to plead guilty. 
 
 In 2016, Gen. James E. Cartwright, who was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his discussions with reporters about Iran’s nuclear program. Obama pardoned him in January 2017, just before Trump took office. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Gabe Gutierrez and Daniella Silva 
 
 AUGUSTA, Georgia — The intelligence industry contractor accused of giving journalists a top-secret report about Russian interference in the U.S. election pleaded not guilty in court Thursday — as federal prosecutors suggested that she may have had plans to leak more classified information. 
 
 Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old government contractor who was working with the National Security Agency, pleaded not guilty to one count of "willful retention and transmission of national defense information” during a detention hearing in Augusta, Georgia, Thursday afternoon. 
 
 Winner was denied bail Thursday afternoon pending trial. She said nothing as she was led away in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. 
 
 Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Solari said in court that Winner admitted she had leaked the top secret document "to a particular news agency she admired" — and said "she was underwhelmed with what WikiLeaks had to offer." 
 
 "She couldn't understand why this document hadn't been leaked already," Solari said. 
 
 Prosecutors added that Winner allegedly had access to the dark web and had set up burner email accounts. 
 
 Agents found two notebooks in Winner’s home, according to the prosecution. 
 
 In one, prosecutors allege that she wrote, "I want to burn the White House down." 
 
 On a page in one of the notebooks, prosecutors said, she listed the names of several Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, including Osama Bin Laden. 
 
 In the dramatic hearing, Solari argued that Winner should not be released on bail and that she was not simply an Air Force veteran and yoga instructor caught up in a horrible mistake — but someone who had taken definite steps to disclose classified information. 
 
 Solari said Winner had searched online to find out whether or not top secret computers detected when flash drives were inserted in them. 
 
 The government alleges that Winner did just that — insert a flash drive into a top secret computer while she worked in the Air Force. The drive, or any information that was downloaded, has not been located. 
 
 "She would undoubtedly be a target of recruitment from our adversaries," Solari told Judge Brian Epps. 
 
 Reality Leigh Winner appears at a detention hearing in this courtroom sketch. Richard Miller 
 
 Titus Nichols, Winner's defense attorney, argued that the government was heavy on insinuations but low on facts and were "making a mountain out of a molehill." 
 
 "Simply plugging a flash drive into a computer is not downright frightening," Nichols said. 
 
 Prosecutors also said that during a recorded phone conversation with her mother, Winner said, "Mom, those documents. I screwed up." 
 
 Solari stressed that Winner referred to "documents" in the plural, and that federal agents were looking to see whether she may have stolen other classified information. 
 
 Winner’s lawyer had told NBC News on Wednesday that she would enter a not guilty plea. 
 
 "My client is innocent until proven guilty and we plan to enter a plea of not guilty," defense attorney Nichols told NBC News Wednesday afternoon. 
 
 Winner was indicted by a grand jury on one count of willful retention and transmission of national defense information earlier Wednesday, according to court documents. 
 
 She was being held in a Lincoln County jail while awaiting her detention hearing. 
 
 In court Thursday, Winner's parents testified about her character as a judge determined whether or not she would be released on bail. 
 
 Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, told NBC News on Tuesday that Winner "would not jeopardize anybody’s safety" and was "terrified" when she returned to her home in Augusta on Saturday to find federal agents waiting for her. 
 
 Billie Winner-Davis and her husband, Gary Davis, parents of Reality Leigh Winner, arrive at the U.S. District Courthouse on June 8 in Augusta, Georgia. Chris Aluka Berry / EPA 
 
 She said that despite the allegations against her daughter, she remains "a proud mom ... I have every reason to be proud of that girl." 
 
 Her mother cried continuously after Winner was denied bail. 
 
 Winner was arrested Saturday, but the Justice Department announced she had been taken into custody on Sunday, barely an hour after online publication The Intercept published a report containing the highly classified NSA document. 
 
 The publication’s report described new details about Russian efforts to hack voting systems in the United States a week prior to the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 While the document doesn’t say the hacking changed any votes, the publication said it "raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results." 
 
 The criminal complaint against Winner did not link the charge against her with the story, but a senior federal official confirmed to NBC News that Winner is the accused leaker of the document published by The Intercept. The NSA has a large facility in Georgia. 
 
 Gabe Gutierrez reported from Augusta, Georgia, and Daniella Silva from New York. ||||| Reality Winner, charged with leaking U.S. secrets to a news outlet, walks into the Federal Courthouse in Augusta, Ga., Tuesday, June 26, 2018. Winner previously pleaded not guilty and has been in custody... (Associated Press) 
 
 AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — A woman accused of leaking U.S. secrets to a news outlet pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Georgia. 
 
 Reality Winner, 26, entered her guilty plea after reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors that calls for her to serve five years and three months behind bars, news outlets reported. A judge will sentence her later. 
 
 "All of these actions I did willfully, meaning I did them of my own free will," she told the court, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported . 
 
 Winner has been held without bail since she was arrested in June 2017 and charged under the Espionage Act. Her trial had been set to start Oct. 15. 
 
 She is a former Air Force linguist who speaks Arabic and Farsi and had a top-secret security clearance. She worked for the national security contractor Pluribus International at Fort Gordon in Georgia when she was charged in June 2017 with copying a classified U.S. report and mailing it to an unidentified news organization. 
 
 The Justice Department announced Winner's arrest on the same day The Intercept, an online news outlet, reported it had obtained a classified National Security Agency report suggesting Russian hackers attacked a U.S. voting software supplier before the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 The NSA report was dated May 5, the same as the document Winner was accused of leaking.
– More than a year after her arrest, Reality Leigh Winner is pleading guilty. The former NSA contractor—who allegedly supplied the media with secret intel on Russians hacking US voting systems—planned to enter her plea agreement Friday in federal court, Engadget reports. "I do know that she has always been ready and willing to accept responsibility for any wrongdoing, and that she will accept the consequences," her mother Billie Winnie Davis says in a statement. The 26-year-old Air Force veteran was denied bail and spent a year in jail after the Intercept ran a bombshell NSA report detailing Russian hacking of a voting equipment vendor and attempts to hack 122 local election officials. Emails obtained through FOIA requests show that local officials didn't know about the hack until it leaked to the press. But as Winner became a political lightning rod, she lost several court battles and faced 10 years behind bars and a $250,000 fine for espionage, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports. Now comes her guilty plea, which remains under wraps. "I still disagree strongly with the use of the Espionage charge against citizens" like Reality, her mother says. "The use of the Espionage charge prevents a person from defending themselves or explaining their actions to a jury, thus making it difficult for them to receive a fair trial and treatment in the court system." (Per one report, 39 states saw Russians intrude on US elections.)