Snowden and Assange both deserve pardons, period.
On Saturday December 14th, Pastor Mark Burns, who is known to be close to President Donald J. Trump, announced via Twitter that President Trump would pardon Julian Assange.
Many people across the political spectrum applauded this, and others, especially former national security officials such as Susan Rice were vehemently opposed to the idea. Although the announcement was later retracted as a miscommunication, it should be noted that it revived the movement to pardon Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden as well.
In 2013, Edward Snowden exposed classified NSA materials that showed that the National Security Agency was illegally, against the 4th amendment, spying on all Americans. Snowden has been, and with good reason, commended for his act of bravery in whistleblowing the wrongs committed against his fellow Americans. Unfortunately for the then-30 year old NSA contractor, the political establishment cracked down on him, and it was clear that he would not receive a fair trial, even though he committed no crime. As Snowden was traveling to South America to seek refuge, the Obama administration threatened the governments of any nations that were considering giving asylum to Snowden, thus when Snowden was going through Russia on his way to South America, he was trapped by the State Dept. The US government used this tactic to frame Snowden as a traitor who was working with the Russian government, when that is simply not factually correct.
In the case of Julian Assange, the story gets a little bit more complicated, as there were more than one or two nations involved. Assange, having founded WikiLeaks in 2006, worked with U.S. Army Intelligence Analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 to publish a series of leaks, including the Baghdad airstrike collateral murder video. In this video, American soldiers fired on a group of men, and laughed at some of the casualties, which included two Reuters journalists, all of whom were civilians. The second strike targeted the first responders to arrive on the scene.
In June of 2012, Assange took refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, WikiLeaks published several confidential Democratic Party emails, showing that the party’s national committee favored Hillary Clinton over her rival, Bernie Sanders, and worked against Sanders.
On April 11, 2019, the Ecuadorian Embassy withdrew Assange’s asylum status and he was subsequently arrested by British police. He is currently incarcerated in HM Prison Belmarsh, and is awaiting a decision on extradition to the US, which is expected on January 4, 2021.
Edward Snowden and the Australian-born Julian Assange are both national heroes to the United States in my opinion, as Snowden exposed the mass infringing of the natural rights belonging to all Americans, and Assange exposed horrific war crimes, as well as a rigged election. Both of these men made tremendous sacrifices, and they each deserve unconditional pardons from President Trump, full stop.
