The Latest: Woman charged with top-secret leak denied bond

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — The Latest on a Georgia woman charged with leaking classified documents to a news organization (all times local):

7:15 p.m.

A judge has ruled that a woman charged with leaking secrets to a reporter will remain jailed until her trial after prosecutors argued that she might possess more stolen intelligence and could try to flee the country.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian Epps denied bond Thursday for 25-year-old Reality Winner. Prosecutor Jennifer Solari says investigators seized a notebook from Winner’s house in Augusta, Georgia, and in it, Winner made references about traveling to the Middle East. At one point she wrote, “I want to burn the White House down … find somewhere in Kurdistan to live. Haha.”

Winner worked for a U.S. government contractor in Augusta. She is a former Air Force linguist who speaks Farsi and Arabic. Prosecutors don’t think Winner is a jihadist or terrorist sympathizer, they say that before she left the military, she inserted an external hard drive into a top-secret computer there. They say they don’t know what happened to it or what it might contain.

Winner’s attorney says she should be released and prosecutors are exaggerating the threat she poses.

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1:30 a.m.

The parents of a young woman charged with leaking U.S. government secrets to a reporter say she poses no flight risk if she’s released from pre-trial confinement.

The parents of 25-year-old Reality Winner fear prosecutors will use the case to send a tough message from the Trump administration.

Winner is a former Air Force linguist who now works as a U.S. government contractor. She was arrested Saturday by FBI agents on charges that she made copies of a classified report containing top-secret information and mailed it to an online news organization.

A judge has scheduled a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court to determine whether to allow Winner to be released on bond pending trial. She has been jailed in neighboring Lincoln County since her arrest.