Not to tread too much into political territory, but if Warren or Sanders is the next US President I'd assume he will receive a full pardon.
It makes you wonder if new presidents get "read in" on what the "puppet masters" are expecting of them (/s) or is each simply more corrupt than the last, regardless of Party.
Or that seemed like extenuating circumstances. There was very interesting commentary on this I heard somewhere from someone who'd been through similar experience. If memory serves - and it very well may not - it was Henry Kissinger on the extras for the Doctor Strangelove DVD.
I voted for Obama the second time, but only as a lesser of 2 evils.
1) The "puppet masters" are just the American voters
2) The voters want to be secure (really, feel secure)
3) The damage any attack would do to that sense of security is high enough to justify extreme expenditures to minimize even low-risk scenarios
4) The President's classified clearance gives them a different perspective on the active threat risk model than the average citizen
5) Communicating the active threat risk model to the citizenry defeats the goals of (2)
Also every politician fears being the person who cancelled that program/reduced that sentence/restrained the police because there's a huge bias towards "doing something" even if it's the wrong thing.
If we're using Occam's Razor, I think "Defense Contractors" would make a closer shave.
It's the same with stuff like the Patriot act and the NSA programs. The government got spooked about letting it happen again and the FBI is able to keep just enough of a trickle of failed 'terrorist' [2] plots to make it seem like a reasonable threat. There's a big bias towards doing something in the world where the benefits of not doing something are hard to gauge.
Fighting against all that is a lot of work politically and decisions have to be made about what's the priority for any administration. Obama chose healthcare and spent the years he had a majority focused on getting that through. Then after that he didn't control the house or the senate so he could only do so much via executive order and I think by that point he'd been steeped in the believers too long so didn't have the same zeal.
> It makes you wonder if new presidents get "read in" on what the "puppet masters" are expecting of them (/s) or is each simply more corrupt than the last, regardless of Party.
I think it's principally a combination of two things 1) they learn a lot more about all the national security than when they're not in the executive (excluding members of the intelligence committees and even they only get a picture of what's actually going on) and 2) they're suddenly surrounded by and being briefed by people who principally believe in these operations. Everyday some of the few people guaranteed a slice of the presidents time are people from the intelligence community who give him/her (eventually) their daily briefing after all.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/why-obama-has-...
[1.5] Ultimately the whole thing was a giant mess because it was hastily done and once something is being done in the military it can be hard to change course unless there's a big push behind it.
[2] For varying values of terrorist. Quite a few had no contact with anyone other than a government informant or agent for the length of their 'plot'!
The problem the president faces is that if you piss off the intelligence services, you a.) won't get much useful intelligence to do your job and b.) have powerful organizations with lots of dirt on you who want to see you gone. So from a strict power-play position, it's never wise to piss off the intelligence services. Those who do likely won't find themselves in power for long.
(We've seen some of this with Trump, who did piss off the intelligence services and now sees a steady barrage of leaks designed to damage his reputation and undermine his power, as well as administration officials who keep critical information from him because they don't trust him with it. Personality-wise I would've expected Trump to be more likely to pardon Snowden, but Trump is philosophically an authoritarian and not terribly sympathetic to people who undermine authority.)
I could see Sanders or Andrew Yang potentially pardoning Snowden, but I think Warren or Biden would be too cooperative with the government bureaucracy.
Sure, on the main economic left-right axis, which has very little to do with this issue.
Congress explicitly prohibited him from closing it, in response to his administration indicating it would fulfill his campaign promise to do so.
Just want to add in that Ed Snowden is an American hero and the mass media that harp on lawbreaking or call him a traitor are damaging to the country.
Now, if Obama has pardoned Assange things might be a little differenct for Manning, but that's a weirder counterfactual assumption.
If she had been pardoned, that conviction would be null, and her fifth amendment right would apply. She would have a strong legal defence to avoid being thrown in jail.
The most relevant ruling would be Burdick v United States (1915) where the Supreme Court majority opinion stated that a pardon "carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it." It was an offhand remark which hasn't been litigated in front of the Supreme Court since then so it's an open issue whether the statement above is authoritative and binding but there is zero law or precedent that allows convictions to be nullified by Presidential pardon.
AFAIK only a higher court can nullify a conviction.
I wouldn't assume that.
I would definitely not assume that it would happen early on, given their policy ambitions, the need for political capital for them, and the fact that both are experienced enough legislators that they are unlikely to have (or succumb to staff who have) naive ideas about the impact it would or would not have on their broader agenda.