Reality Winner: NSA whistleblower says prison guards mocked her for contracting coronavirus

Federal prison guards mocked National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner after she tested positive for coronavirus, the former Air Force translator said.

Serving a five-year sentence for leaking secret reports on Russian election interference, the former intelligence contractor fears she is facing retaliation and will die in the Texas prison where more than 500 inmates have tested positive for Covid-19.

Her fears were revealed in an email to sister Brittany Winner, who tweeted on Monday that prison guards from the Fort Worth all women's prison, FMC Carswell, congratulated her for testing positive.

"Officially Covid-19 positive. I am being retaliated against harshly for articles last week and am about to take admin remedies," Winner wrote.

Winner, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to transmitting national security information, is seeking a compassionate release before the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit following the spread of coronavirus at the prison.

She was the first person charged under the Espionage Act by the Trump administration

The Bureau of Prisons reported on Monday that 509 women of the 1,357 inmates at FMC Carswell had tested positive for Covid-19, with a 51-year-old inmate dying from the virus on 20 July.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said that for safety and security reasons they do not discuss conditions of confinement relating to an individual inmate.

"However, we can share that the BOP has an administrative remedy program for inmates to seek formal review and redress of almost any concern they have regarding their incarceration," the spokesperson said.

In her email sent to family and shared with The Independent, Ms Winner said the prison guards went out of their way to "congratulate" her on the diagnosis.

"This is the same officer who last week told me I couldn't clean because I was 'not feeling well' despite no symptoms, tried to have me randomly tested and isolated so I couldn't talk to my attorney," Winner wrote in the email.

"They allowed someone positive from our unit to go to a hospital unit where dialysis and chemo patients live, starting the infection spread down there," she added.

Her sister said the positive diagnosis reinforced the urgency of an expedited response to her appeal for compassionate release.

"But she can't afford to wait any longer, especially now that she's officially Covid-19 positive," Ms Winner told The Independent in an email. "If she starts manifesting severe symptoms of Covid, we have no confidence that she will be adequately cared for or even seen by a doctor at FMC Carswell because the cases at the unit have exploded in recent days."