President Donald Trump told reporters he is considering pardoning former NSA contractor Edward Snowden for leaking a stockpile of classified files to several news organizations in 2013.
“There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly,” Trump said in an interview Thursday. “Many people are on his side.”
Snowden currently resides in Russia where he was granted asylum, after fleeing the United States for revealing top-secret files that exposed the massive extent of the government’s spy operations in-country and abroad. He was charged with theft of government property and violating the Espionage Act in 2013.
Snowden’s lawyers have been trying to negotiate a deal for him to return to the States without facing jail time, but were unable to agree on terms of repatriation. Following the release of his 2019 memoir, Permanent Record, the government filed a civil suit against Snowden for violating non-disclosure agreements with both the CIA and NSA.
His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, has insisted that Snowden hasn’t perpetrated any crimes and shouldn’t just be pardoned but exonerated from future prosecution. “He was acting not only in the interest of the American citizens but the interest of all humankind,” Kucherena remarked.
President Trump has clearly relaxed his stance that Snowden is “a spy who should be executed.” Back in 2014, Trump tweeted that “Snowden is a traitor and a disgrace.”
Snowden is a traitor and a disgrace. Make no mistake, he is no hero. In fact he is a coward who should come back & face justice.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2014
In a New Jersey news conference held on Saturday, he told reporters about the possibility of a pardon, “I’m going to start looking at it.”
