DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Would You Pardon Snowden and Assange

Not a lot of context or back story because I'm sure most are pretty familiar with both Assange and Snowden. What do you guys think? If you were the president would you pardon them? Or instead of them is there anyone specific you would pardon and why?

Nope.

The moment Snowden got that Russian citizenship was the moment whatever moral high ground he had went out the window.

He can stay in Russia.

It's always interesting to see what other people think. I like the aspect that Snowden exposed our own agencies illegally spying on Americans but hmmmmmmm, yeah I don't like that Russian citizenship either. That's odd he went there. If I were him I'd consider them kind of the enemy, I wonder if he thought about that. I guess it didn't matter that much to him.

I think I would pardon him because I never thought he was a traitor but a whistleblower that had no protection/cover. But I would not let him back in the country now that he is a freshly pledged Russian.

He went there because it's one of few places that would not send him back to certain death sentence IMHO. BUT that does not mean he should have become one of them.

Yea I agree with what he did, even though I hate how it happened. Like OCD just said, he is most certainly a whistleblower. And if his supervisors would’ve taken his warning seriously, he wouldn’t had felt the need to do what he did.

That being said, make a decision like that, you gotta live with it. And going to our greatest adversary seeing refuge, and then ultimately gaining citizenship there....eh, he can stay there.

There’s now no way a pardon can be justified, simply because he will now always be viewed as a Russian agent. We can no longer assume he hasn’t been compromised and given secrets to Russia, because I doubt he gains citizenship if he kept his mouth shut about the inner workings of his department.

Such a friggin joke, SNOWDEN !!! is like

Snowden is like if the judge hired the balif to steal some food off the Judge's kitchen table while the Judge stood in the kitchen and then threw the food into the garbage disposal, and then the balif went to the judges guest room to "hide out" from prosecution from the judge for the crime of taking food

While the American people are a 2 year old child in a high chair in that kitchen trying to eat some meal.

The Snowden case is such a friggin joke! They can't even pardon a guy for a crime they totally were a part of both sides of, commiting it and constructing the guy who would commit it,
So they aren't even trying to catch the guy who did the thing, because they orchestrated the thing from the start.

the Snowden case is a case of manipulating the American people.

Ohh, there's got to be a bad guy. then let's create a bad guy. We'll call him falcon and the snowman, No can't do that, call him Snowden.

then we'll steal info and say he stole info, and we can't find him.

No, more like.. We've stolen so much info, we can't pretend we don't have it anymore, what do we do.

umm, let's say a guy found out we stole the info, we'll create a guy, (snowden) , one of our guys, and

HE, will say he found all this info that "somebody" stole, that way when we have all the stolen info,
I mean we have so much we can't pretend we don't have it anymore,

then, we can say, OH, he somehow is the bad guy for turning it in that the info was stolen, and then!

We can ship him off to somewhere, foreign land, and pretend we can't get to him,
all the while, we aren't looking for him.

But it makes the (hurt) justice seekers have someone to blame.

WHY would you Pardon Snowden? The Chino Comunist Democrats aren't trying to get Snowden, they created him.

Look! Don't belive me? Go look! Where was Obama when the Snowden case broke?
Obama was in China the day the Snowden case broke, they were pow wow-ing admiring their work.

Assange’s problems also involve underage girls. Wikileaks is a secondary issue. Most people who review the sexual assault charges suggest that it was a pretext for retaining him because of Wikileaks. A Trump pardon would probably help him with Wikileaks, but does nothing against his issues with underage girls, but those charges would likely remain in other countries. Moreover it really is an issue with Britain, and we normally don’t get cross with them. So I do not see that happening.

Snowden is either Daniel Ellsberg without a newspaper or a traitor, or an outside of the bounds whistleblower, depending on your view, and probably all three wrapped into a hot mess. I don’t see Trump pardoning him, as he is disliked on the left and right.

I put in bold the part of your thought process I found to be flawed. There's nothing "normal" about Trump and he has shown a propensity to outrage our allies.

However, your end result I certainly agree with. The reason I don't believe that Trump won't pardon either one of them is because they didn't do any personal favors or Trump's bidding. If you expect rewards from the king you must have at some point kissed his ring. Or kissed something else of his. You can use your imagination on that one.

If you recall, Wikileaks did Trump a favor, by releasing the Podesta emails in a searchable format.

A pardon for American crimes is not going to fix Assange's challenges with other nations. So there is no real benefit, and only downside, as it will irk the British.

You're right.

No on both. In my opinion Snowden is treasonous traitor. When captured, he should be put on public trail and hung if found guilty. Assange should be serving 99 years in a Swedish prison for a rape he got away with.

Assange shouldn't need a pardon because he qualifies as a journalist and he shouldn't be found guilty or be taken to trial in the first place. The court case which he may never receive is the punishment. On top of that, he is not a U.S. Citizen and he did not commit anything that could be considered a crime on U.S. soil. Still, the fact that our government agencies have managed to destroy his life from afar shows just how powerful the three letter agencies are. So, I believe he should be pardoned just to send a message that we believe in the first amendment and freedom of the press.

Snowden did the things that he did after a long string of whistleblowers, who tried to do things the legal way, were illegally harassed and persecuted for trying to restore ethics within our government. I can't blame him for stealing the documents and handing them over to Glenn Greenwald. Getting stuck in Russia was caused by our State Department. He cannot be blamed for that. Most of all, I feel that the population owes him a debt of gratitude for his brave actions which exposed how our own government was spying on us and most likely still is. I believe he deserves a pardon. It is the right thing to do.

I view any of the other charges thrown at Assange with a ton of suspicion given how and when they originated. I don't think that they it is reasonable to provide those claims any validity given the circumstances and complete absence of evidence.

In fact, I struggle to understand how anybody can give credibility to government insiders, on both sides of the aisle, that have repeatedly lied to us on a number of topics including: reasons for going to war with Iraq, our operations and support in Syria, our role in a genocide in Yemen, technologies employed to illegally spy on the American people.

As yet another example of that corruption, does anyone else here realize that Liz Cheney just put something into the NDAA bill that will prevents the President from withdrawing from wars. It passed in a veto proof majority with bi-partisan support. Let that sink in for a bit. These people are not your friends. 90% of Americans want us out of Iraq, yet they are doing everything they can to prevent that. Who do they work for? Do you still think they work for us? Or do they work for Saudi Arabia and are using our sons and daughters as mercenaries?

The actions of Snowden and Assange are the effect of having a corrupt government that illegally hides information and punishes whistleblowers. Restore integrity to the government and these types of leaks (motivated by conscience instead of foreign spies) become a non-issue. They should be pardoned on that point alone. Pardoning them sends the message that we recognize the ethical lapses that have occurred within our intelligence community and we are committed to righting the wrongs.

Maybe they work for defense contractors.