Trump advisers renew push for pardon of Edward Snowden
President-elect Donald Trump nearly granted a pardon in 2021 to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor responsible for the largest leak of top-secret information about U.S. surveillance programs in the nation’s history.
“I decided to let that one ride, let the courts work it out,” Trump said 10 months after leaving office, when asked about pardons for Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “I was very close to going the other way.”
But advocates for clemency for Snowden, including several of Trump’s picks for top Cabinet posts, are hopeful that Trump is now closer to pardoning the former spy, who has been living in Moscow for more than a decade to avoid a 2013 Justice Department indictment.
