Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he remains committed to pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on his first day in office if elected to the White House.
Kennedy Jr. on Monday asked President Biden to pardon Snowden, who famously visited Hong Kong in 2013 and revealed classified NSA documents that revealed the U.S. government was spying on its citizens. A petition has been published asking for. He was subsequently charged with espionage and theft of government property.
“Mr. Snowden is the first American to reveal that our government has been spying on millions of law-abiding Americans, in violation of numerous laws and the fundamental right to privacy,” Kennedy Jr. said. “and performed an important public service.” in a video attached to the petition.
Snowden, who is now a Russian citizen after applying for asylum, decided to release his documents after the U.S. government revoked his passport as he attempted to travel to Central and South America, his final destination. I was stranded in Russia. He avoids U.S. prosecution for taking thousands of classified documents from the NSA and leaking them to the press. Snowden has not left Russia since then.
Snowden says Russian citizenship gives him and his family a “bit of stability”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he remains committed to pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. (Getty Images)
This information included a mass collection of Americans’ metadata, allowing the government to see when calls and messages were sent and to whom.
The video also includes comments from former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, who criticized Snowden as a traitor.
“Until Edward Snowden, no one knew that intelligence agencies were illegally mining all of our data and spying on Americans,” Kennedy Jr. said. “So it’s no surprise that the same intelligence agencies are now trying to paint Snowden as a criminal, and that captured politicians are backing that theory.”
“Edward Snowden is an American hero,” Kennedy Jr. continued. “Instead of putting Snowden in jail, I’m going to erect a statue of him. [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange was somewhere near the Washington Press Club, or perhaps outside the CIA headquarters in Langley, as a civics lesson for the Republic. ”
Edward Snowden says Barack Obama made surveillance ‘worse’
Kennedy Jr. has released a petition asking President Biden to pardon Snowden. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)
The presidential candidate previously said he would pardon Snowden and Assange, an Australian publisher who is in a high-security London prison and is fighting extradition to the United States on spying charges for publishing classified military documents in 2010. was.
“The time has come to return our government to the democratic and humane ideals that we have always represented as a nation,” Kennedy Jr. said. “Let’s get back to defending free speech and honoring the truth-tellers and whistleblowers who risked their careers and freedoms to protect our careers and our freedoms.”
Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of the U.S. intelligence community.
After initially challenging Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy Jr. began running for the White House as an independent in October, setting up a matchup between Biden and Trump in the 2024 general election. did.
Edward Snowden speaks via video link at a conference at the University of Buenos Aires Law School, Argentina, November 14, 2016. (Reuters)
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President Trump has previously said he believes Snowden is a “total traitor” and suggested the whistleblower “should be executed.” Still, the former president later acknowledged in the final years of his administration that he had considered pardoning either Snowden or Assange, who was indicted by the Trump Justice Department, but declined to say which.
“The America I love does not punish whistleblowers,” Kendi Jr. wrote in the petition. “Truth-tellers who defend free speech and seek to return America to its democratic and humane ideals should be respected, not prosecuted.”
