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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

That sounds suspiciously like he's considering pardoning Snowden.

Also... going from calling for Snowden's execution to potentially pardoning him is one hell of a 180.

I would love him to do so. We really need another wake up call in this country that the government routinely lies to us and that trusting our officials requires them proving they can be trusted.

Remember, Snowden has been out of this country since May of 2013 and the last Administration did not pardon him but instead did pardon Manning whose actions were more reckless. It really comes down to the fact Snowden really stepped on the toes of some big time political players who are not used to being called out.

Manning stood to face her her crimes like a long line of revered civil disobedients before her. Snowden ran away into the arms of a hostile foreign power. That has just as much to do with pissing off the government as what either of them revealed.

The laws that would out Snowden and Manning in prison for life are unjust and there's nothing wrong with what either of them did. I don't blame Snowden for leaving a country full of idiots calling for his death

And Manning stuck around to fight those laws on the frontline with great personal risk and sacrifice. Snowden fled to avoid having to make the type of commitment that Manning had made.

Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. Your comment would be fine without the swipe at the end.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> last Administration did not pardon him but instead did pardon Manning

Manning was NOT pardoned. Her sentence was commuted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_manning#Commutation

I think Snowden is a hero.

Sadly, this feels more like Trump’s perverse “everything Obama did was bad so I’ll do the opposite” logic, instead of acknowledging that Edward Snowden made a difficult choice to protect our republic.

Trump's tweet, referenced at the end of the article, suggests that the decision on whether to execute or support Snowden depends on whether the revelations are politically useful to Trump's campaign:

> In a 2013 tweet, Trump wrote: “Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama’s records, I might become a major fan.”

I still hope there is a pardon in the works though.

Doing 180 requires some direction, principle or policy.

Trump's just says something random to get into news or test of it would make him more popular.

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2016/06/04/it-ought-to-be-com...

> That sounds suspiciously like he's considering pardoning Snowden.

It sounds suspiciously like he's doing the “say provocative but noncommittal things referencing subjects of controversy as a distraction from other controversies over concrete policies” thing he does, on average, on more than a daily basis.

Meanwhile, the plot to cancel public voting in the Presidential election and substitute legislature-selected electors in sufficient Republican-governed swing states to guarantee Trump reelection has already passed the “provide a public pretext” stage with Trump’s handpicked leadership at USPS, after dismantling capacity to produce widely publicized mailing delays, following up by notifying states that the Postal Service’s “delivery standards” do not support completing delivery and return of ballots on the timelines required for mailing voting (with the first part of the pretext provided by the pandemics impact on safety and public confidence in in-person voting), leaving only the obvious legislative action as a remaining step.

> Also... going from calling for Snowden's execution to potentially pardoning him is one hell of a 180.

The President always had the potential to pardon anyone for actual, charged, or potential and uncharged federal crimes. There's no transition, much less a 180, to “potential”.

Perhaps he expects the Russians will execute him if he's pardoned. Wouldn't surprise me given their track record.

Trump's an asshole, and if he pardons Snowden, he'll be less of an asshole than Obama was for NOT pardoning him.

I voted for Obama twice, and the fact that he didn't pardon him told me everything I need to know about him being full of shit and made me regret ever supporting him.

FYI: I worked at Booz Allen when Snowden went public. I can't talk about any details, but basically I upended my life, left DC, and went pure private sector as a direct result of his revelations. I still don't make what I made then, and I don't care. If not for him, I would have still been working on stuff that was undermining the US constitution. All my coworkers were acting like he was Satan, and how he made Booz Allen look bad, and blah blah blah. My favorite moment was asking my coworker, who was defending the spying, if she would give me her email password. You can guess the response.

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