President Donald Trump said he would look into a pardon for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Learn more about where Snowden is in 2020, and what he’s doing now.
Getty Edward Snowden President Donald Trump said he would look into a pardon for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, saying he has more to learn about the case before taking action. Snowden is now living in Russia, but said last year he would consider returning to the United States if he believed he could count on a fair trial. “Edward Snowden” is trending on Twitter after Trump said he would consider a pardon during a press conference today, Saturday, August 15, 2020. Snowden became a controversial figure after he copied and leaked classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013. At that time, he was a CIA employee and subcontractor. He fled Hawaii in 2013, landing in Hong Kong after he revealed government secrets about global surveillance programs to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill. He was charged by The U. S. Department of Justice with violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property. Here’s what you need to know: 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.” https://t.co/fAseViVwAx Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 14, 2020 President Donald Trump said he would look at the case of Edward Snowden during a press conference today, Saturday, August 15, 2020. He conceded he did not know enough about the case to take action, but said he would look into it after he was asked about a potential pardon by a reporter. “I’m not that aware of the Snowden situation,” Trump told reporters in a briefing Saturday. “Many people think he should be somehow treated differently and other people think he did very bad things. I’m going to take a look at that very strongly.” He polled his aides on Thursday, August 13, 2020, to determine whether he should free the NSA whistleblower and allow him to return to the United States from Russia, where he has been living for at least three years.
