Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a trial balloon and Holder is acting as a stalking horse for the Obama administration. They're setting up to pardon him if the public approves.

View on HN

More prosecutions under the Espionage Act than every prior administration combined... I don't see a pardon in the cards. Also, a trial balloon wouldn't be Holder calling for a trial - that has been said many times by many politicians for a long time.

How many of those were legitimate though? Except for a very small handful of high profile cases, I have absolutely no idea about the rest of them so I'm genuinely curious.

I suppose that depends on how you define "legitimate" in this context. If you mean communist infiltrators, none; if you mean government workers leaking information to journalists, all.

https://www.propublica.org/special/sealing-loose-lips-charti...

Couldn't it be more advantageous for them to pardon him rather than taking him to trial and risking exposure of the details?

What details did you have in mind? Even if we were to ignore the nature of the state as envisioned by his party, the President's actions clearly demonstrate that he is a proponent of state secrets - a pardon would directly undercut that position. The statist has complete faith in the system (at least in the long run), that is why the whole song and dance about going through the government approved whistleblower program keeps getting mentioned - regardless of the ill-conceived nature of the program or how righteous the leaker's cause is.

I would really like for this to be the case, but I kind of doubt it. Let's wait and see.

It would be a process and would involve him returning for something resembling a trial but my guess is he could do a lot of preliminary negotiation if the White House was open to it which would involve him serving no time and ending up a hero.

This is the last official statement AFAIK and the language is surprisingly sanguine. http://time.com/3974713/white-house-edward-snowden-petition/

That would be wonderful, but i fear it won't come to pass. The Whitehouse won't, and frankly can't. They have to consider how many other NSA employees hold similar opinions and will consider going public with their information if their administration has anything but a hardline response to the Snowden case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com