Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America

by Sarah Kendzior

In 2018, Winner was jailed under the Espionage Act and was given the longest sentence in US history for her particular offense, totaling sixty-three months.25 She is banned from speaking to the press. No government official has bothered to interview Winner about her explosive findings, not even Robert Mueller.26 There remains to this day a publicly available NSA document showing that US voting infrastructure was attacked. It floats around cyberspace like an unheeded warning, attracting no hearings beyond the one that sent Winner to prison. Winner was soon joined by other federal whistle-blowers: Natalie Mayflower Edwards, indicted for exposing that Russia had infiltrated the Treasury in 2015; and Tricia Newbold, a White House employee suspended for exposing that security clearances had been knowingly given to staffers who violated national security protocol.27 Among those staffers were Jared and Ivanka. The Trump administration whistle-blowers have all been women whose findings are marginalized by officials and the press. This is not surprising. To take the evidence seriously means to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of Trump’s election, and all of the decisions—appointments, laws, arrests—that came after. Trump has spent his life silencing inconvenient women, and as president he does the same.