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Comment by bythckr | Hacker News Reader

Of late there has been lot of chatter regarding ppl like Edward Snowden trying to get Trump to pardon Assange. Considering the pardon spree that Trump is on, I was hoping Assange would get pardoned.

I see this as UK stalling till Biden comes in power. They fear Trump might just pardon him.

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That was my initial thought as well. Placate everyone until the threat of a Trump pardon is in the rear-view mirror.

Why would Trump consider Edward Snowden's opinion on pardoning Assange, and where is this chatter? Trump has never been supportive of Snowden in the past, as far as I have read.

He's never been vocally against either one. He has been asked about it and has suggested that he is considering it and recognizes that a lot of people think he should, but has never said one way or another.

"ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obama's records,I might become a major fan"

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/39568370275766272...

What is he even talking about? Snowden got his records from the NSA and passed it onto journalists. He had nothing with him by the time he got to Russia. How could he possibly reveal Obama's records, even if he wanted to? I feel like at least one Presidential briefing should have covered this.

Also, what the fuck? That's not even a sentence. Was it so hard to find someone who could construct coherent sentences?

That tweet was from 2013. And obviously people tweet very casually, just like in texts.

That's going back 7 years. Trump has been through a lot since then wouldn't you say?

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512209-trump-sa...

There was tweet from Snowden - https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1334608745192677380.

Chatter has been at couple of discord servers I am on. It has been going on for long. But since Biden's win, it has picked up steam.

Trump has always avoided the whole Snowden Assange wikileaks saga - for a guy with too much to say, it's interesting to note.

Obama was quite tough on Snowden and Biden will continue. Trump will just do it out of spite against Obama & Dems and also hoping to get more followers with good hacking skills. Trump will do the right thing for all the wrong reasons.

The federal crimes have already been committed. Trump has authority to pardon him prior to charges being made.

The crazy thing is that Trump hasn't even come close to previous administrations in number of pardons or clemency, nor even the types of offenders who were granted leniency.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/24/so-far-trum...

However, I would like to see Assange pardoned. I'm sure he has some interesting information he hasn't yet released.

That article was written almost a month before Trump's recent pardons, and only tallies through FY2020, ending Sept 30. In the meantime, trump has pardoned war criminals and several people who have done crimes on his behalf. In pretty much everything I've read on the subject, that is not the average sort of offender who is granted leniency.

A lack of a large number of pardons is no surprise, really. By all appearances, he's pardoning his partners in crime and war criminals. Traditionally, pardons are granted to folks who haven't gotten a fair shake, or whose sentences are disproportionate to their crimes. Contrast the number of pardons with the recent spree of executions -- this is all in line with the "tough on crime" narrative. Forget about justice, the goal is brutality and death to the enemy.

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