Just wait, all the self styled "Liberals" and the Democratic Party will
suddenly be opposed to this and will insist that it's a Russian plot with
Trump's complicity.
Miriam
Published on
Friday, August 14, 2020
byCommon Dreams
Forget Your Feelings About Trump, Say Allies of NSA Whistleblower, 'Snowden
Pardon Would Be a Major Win'
"Edward Snowden is a patriot. Our democracy is better off because of him,"
tweeted the ACLU. "As we said four years ago, the president should pardon
him."
byJessica Corbett, staff writer
Edward Snowden
President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested he is open to pardoning
National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. (Photo:
CyberHades/flickr/cc)
After President Donald Trump suggested in an interview published Thursday
night by the New York Post that he is open to pardoning Edward Snowden,
civil liberties advocates issued a fresh wave of calls urging the president
to follow through and allow the American whistleblower to return to the
United States.
The U.S.-based Freedom of the Press Foundation-for which Snowden serves as
board president-tweeted a link to the Post report along with a "long and
varied" list of individuals who have demanded a presidential pardon for
Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who famously exposed U.S. government mass
surveillance by leaking classified materials in 2013.
The ACLU on Friday also responded to the report on Twitter, sharing a Los
Angeles Times op-ed from September 2016 that was authored by the group's
executive director Anthony Romero. He argued that "cases like Edward
Snowden's are precisely the reason the president's constitutional pardon
power exists."
According to the Post, Trump polled his aides in the Oval Office on Thursday
about whether he should allow Snowden to return from Russia-where the former
intelligence contractor has lived in exile since 2013-without the risk of
being imprisoned in the U.S., and the president said he was open to it.
"There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I
mean, I hear that," Trump said of Snowden. As the Post reported:
Trump's comments reflect a remarkable softening in his views about the man
he once deemed a "traitor" worthy of execution. Republican lawmakers and the
Justice Department's inspector general recently highlighted misuse of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the secret FISA court to surveil
former Trump adviser Carter Page.
"Snowden is one of the people they talk about. They talk about numerous
people, but he is certainly one of the people that they do talk about,"
Trump said on Thursday, before turning to his aides. "I guess the DOJ is
looking to extradite him right now? ...It's certainly something I could look
at. Many people are on his side, I will say that. I don't know him, never
met him. But many people are on his side."
"How do you feel about that, Snowden? Haven't heard the name in a long
time," Trump reportedly asked his staff. "I've heard it both ways. From
traitor to he's being, you know, persecuted. I've heard it both ways."
Snowden pointed out in a Friday tweet that "the last time we heard a White
House considering a pardon was 2016, when the very same attorney general who
once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA's
unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been 'a public service.'"
That comment came from Eric Holder during a May 2016 interview with David
Alexrod. Holder, who also called Snowden's actions "inappropriate and
illegal," ran the Justice Department under President Barack Obama in 2013,
when Snowden was charged with theft of government property and violating the
Espionage Act.
Journalist Matt Taibbi tweeted in response to Snowden that the fact that the
whistleblower "has been in permanent exile while the creators/defenders of
the illegal surveillance program he exposed have not only gone unpunished,
but have been feted and given high-profile media jobs, is an ongoing
outrage."
Even some right-wing politicians joined the calls for Trump to pardon
Snowden. Michigan Congressman Justin Amash-who became an Independent and
then a Libertarian after leaving the Republican Party last summer-tweeted
his support for the whistleblower Friday:
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) also said in a series of tweets Friday that the
president should pardon Snowden-prompting a response from Cenk Uyger of The
Young Turks: "Wow. I agree. Do you believe in miracles?"
The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald, who was was among the first journalists to
report on leaked documents from Snowden, wrote in a long thread of tweets
Friday that Trump talking about a pardon for Snowden and Massie expressing
his support for one "should not obscure that this is not a right-wing view."
Greenwald also shared the ideologically diverse list of signatories to the
Stand with Snowden pledge and said it is "good to see" that Trump is "now
open to the view of the ACLU and the New York Times, among others, that
Snowden is a heroic whistleblower."
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