Trump Cabinet picks increase odds Edward Snowden could see life of freedom in the US

If President-elect Donald Trump has his way, Tulsi Gabbard will be at the helm of U.S. intelligence and Matt Gaetz will be leading the Justice Department, giving whistle-blower Edward Snowden his best chance yet at a life of freedom in the U.S.

Both Gabbard, a former Hawaii House Democrat, and Gaetz, a former House Republican from Florida, will have to be confirmed by the Senate — an uphill battle that may be made more difficult by their anti-establishment beliefs that Snowden should not be punished for revealing information about classified surveillance programs.

As members of Congress, both Gabbard and Gaetz co-sponsored legislation that called on the federal government to drop all charges against Snowden. During her 2020 presidential campaign, Gabbard promised to protect Snowden and people like him, if elected. 

"If it wasn’t for Snowden, the American people would never have learned the NSA was collecting phone records and spying on Americans," she said on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast at the time.

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"As president, I will protect whistle-blowers who expose threats to our freedom and liberty," Gabbard added.

On Sept. 3, 2020, Gaetz posted to X: "Pardon @Snowden."

In 2013, Snowden was working as an IT contractor for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to meet with three journalists and transferred them thousands of pages of classified documents about the U.S. government’s surveillance of its citizens. 

He then traveled to Russia and planned to head on to Ecuador, but federal authorities canceled his passport before he could get there — and indicted him for espionage.

He attempted to gain asylum elsewhere, but ultimately remained in Russia and became a naturalized citizen in 2022.

The documents he made public revealed previously classified intelligence-gathering programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.K.’s intelligence organization, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), that were conducting surveillance on their own citizens. 

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In 2019, Snowden told NPR the U.S. government was "collecting [data] on everyone, everywhere, all of the time, just in case, because you never know what’s going to be interesting… And so what happened was every time we wrote an email, every time you typed something into that Google search box, every time your phone moved, you sent a text message, you made a phone call… the boundaries of the Fourth Amendment were being changed."

At the time of the leak, the NSA claimed mass surveillance stopped terrorist attacks.

Sue Gordon, deputy director of national intelligence during the first Trump administration, issued a warning about Gabbard’s push for Snowden to be pardoned on CBS this week. 

"Unauthorized disclosures of intelligence are always bad. Don’t go with the good or bad, any good outcome or whether he was right or wrong. He had no authority, and he had different paths, and he harmed America," she said. 

"He not only harmed intelligence, he harmed our allies and partners, and he harmed our businesses by what it allowed China to assume about that. There is nothing justifiable about what he’s done. None. And so if they vacate it, what they’re basically saying is all those rules you follow in order to be able to serve America, they don’t matter anymore."

In 2013, Trump was asked about Snowden. "This guy is a bad guy and there is still a thing called execution!" he said. 

But on the campaign trail in 2020, he struck a more sympathetic tone, saying he'd "look at" giving Snowden a pardon.

Snowden, in 2019, said he is not searching for a pardon, but rather a fair trial in order to return to the U.S. 

"One of the big topics in Europe right now is — should Germany and France invite me in to get asylum?… And of course, I would like to return to the United States. That is the ultimate goal," he said.

"But if I’m going to spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom-line demand that we all have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial. And that’s the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won’t provide access to what’s called a public interest defense," the whistleblower said.

"I’m not asking for a parade. I’m not asking for a pardon. I’m not asking for a pass. What I’m asking for is a fair trial. And this is the bottom-line that any American should require."