There are some advantages being a Democrat not currently in the Obama administration right now, and one of them is that you can take a complete non-position position on the fate of Edward Snowden.
Hillary Clinton said Friday that it’s up to NSA leaker Edward Snowden to decide whether to return to the U.S. and defend himself in court.
“If he wishes to return knowing he would be held accountable and also able to present a defense, that is his decision to make,” the former secretary of state said in an interview with the Guardian, the newspaper that broke the story uncovering many NSA programs with help from leaks from Snowden. The paper received the Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting for its coverage.
Clinton has been critical of Snowden in the past, calling him an “imperfect messenger” who could have gone about his whistleblowing in a way that would have been less damaging to national security. In April, she said it was “sort of odd” that he fled to China and Russia, countries that have restrictive cyberpolicies, and that his leaks helped certain terrorist networks.
“Whether he chooses to return or not is up to him,” she said Friday. “He certainly can stay in Russia apparently under Putin’s protection for the rest of his life if that’s what he chooses.”
Snowden isn't her problem to deal with. Of course, Team Dudebro Defector has repeatedly said there's precisely zero chance of Snowden ever deciding to come back, because "he can't possibly get a fair trial." Loosely translated, that means "He'd be found guilty" and we can't have that, so.
It's a moot point, and she knows it.
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Maybe Mr. Snowden could claim he was forced to act due to his religious convictions? Probably wouldn't succeed - that defense only works for religious convictions which are also held by at lease 5/9 of the Supremes.
Guilty. As. Sin.
Of course, if he had evidence of ongoing criminality at the NSA he could release it and be a hero. Instead he rehashes old programs from the criminal Bush era that were shut down when it became obvious that McCain would not be able to continue the coverup, and ridiculous exaggerations of perfectly ordinary intelligence operations into "the NSA has cracked the computers of 320 million Americans so as to watch them masturbate on a regular basis." Only a credulous simpleton would believe such nonsense, but evidently a lot of them hang out over at the Daily Kos and FireDogLake.
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