Attorney General William Barr said he is “vehemently opposed” to pardoning “traitor” Edward Snowden a week after President Trump floated the idea of granting a pardon to the National Security Agency leaker and fugitive living in Russia.
“He was a traitor, and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people,” Barr said in an interview with the Associated Press. “He was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We can’t tolerate that.”
Snowden, 37, worked at the CIA prior to a stint as a contractor for the NSA. In 2013, he left his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, flew to Hong Kong, and disclosed hundreds of thousands of classified documents to journalists. Snowden revealed not just domestic surveillance programs but also exposed national security operations conducted around the world by the United States and its allies, including against terrorists and adversaries such as China. Snowden, granted asylum by Russia and now living in Moscow, was charged with violating the Espionage Act.
“I’m not that aware of the Snowden situation, but I’m going to start looking at it,” Trump said after being asked about a possible pardon during a press conference last Friday. “There are many, many people. It seems to be a split decision. There are many people who think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things — and I’m going to take a very good look at it.”
The speculation about a pardon was sparked by a New York Post interview in which Trump said, ”There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly.”
Battle lines were quickly drawn within the GOP after Trump suggested a possible pardon.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, tweeted that Snowden “revealed that Trump-haters [Obama Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and [FBI Director James] Comey among others were illegally spying on Americans” and that Trump “should pardon Snowden!”
But Rep. Liz Cheney, the congressional representative for Wyoming who has clashed with Trump on a number of foreign policy issues, condemned Snowden over the weekend. “Edward Snowden is a traitor,” she said. “He is responsible for the largest and most damaging release of classified info in US history. He handed over US secrets to Russian and Chinese intelligence putting our troops and our nation at risk. Pardoning him would be unconscionable.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally to the president, described Snowden’s actions as “treasonous” and said that “if he ever does step foot in the United States again, he should immediately be tried for his crimes against our country.”
“Imagine my surprise to find only the worst people in the country willing to speak against a pardon this time around,” Snowden tweeted Monday. “How far we’ve come!”
The House Intelligence Committee released a heavily redacted report on Snowden in September 2016, arguing Snowden “was not a whistleblower” and “was, and remains, a serial exaggerator and fabricator.”
“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries,” the HPSCI report read. “He handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states. Some of Snowden’s disclosures exacerbated and accelerated existing trends that diminished the IC’s capabilities to collect against legitimate foreign intelligence targets.”
The intelligence committee sent a bipartisan letter to then-President Barack Obama, saying, “We urge you not to pardon Edward Snowden, who perpetrated the largest and most damaging public disclosure of classified information in our nation’s history. … He took the material to China and Russia — two regimes that routinely violate their citizens, privacy and civil liberties.”
In December 2019, a federal judge ruled that Snowden broke his nondisclosure agreements when he didn’t submit for review the manuscript of his Permanent Record, and the judge ordered all the book sale proceeds to be turned over to the U.S. government.
Trump has tweeted about Snowden at least 44 times, repeatedly calling the leaker a “traitor” and a “spy” who had done “tremendous damage to our country” as he lamented that “we are being embarrassed by Russia and China on Snowden.” Before becoming president, Trump tweeted that “a spy in the old days … would be executed” and that Snowden “is a coward who should come back & face justice.”
