Reality Winner, the former National Security Agency contractor who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for leaking classified information about Russian interference in the 2016 election, thanked President Trump on Thursday for saying her sentence was disproportionate compared to the absence of any sentence for Hillary Clinton.

On Friday, the president tweeted: “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff [Sessions], Double Standard.”

[Related: Reality Winner lawyer says he laughed reading Trump's tweet about client]



Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over “classified” information. Gee, this is “small potatoes” compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2018



Winner, 26, was the first person prosecuted by the Trump administration for leaking classified information.

"For 16 months those words, ‘so unfair,’ were actually not allowed by either myself, or my team or my family to really say out in the public. So I just can't thank him enough for finally saying what everybody has been thinking for 16 months,” Winner told CBS News in a phone interview Thursday.

Winner was arrested in June 2017, around the same time online news outlet The Intercept published a copy of a report that described Russia’s attempts to hack into a Florida-based supplier of voter software and the accounts of election officials.

She told CBS it’s been “vindicating but also frustrating” to watch the Russia investigation play out behind bars.