Whistleblower Edward Snowden may fair well now that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Florida Representative Matt Gaetz as the next attorney general.
Trump announced the nomination on Wednesday, which many call the biggest bombshell pick yet for his new administration. Gaetz has been a proponent for Snowden's pardon for leaking classified documents. While he does not have direct power to pardon Snowden, his proximity to Trump may help.
In 2013, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper told Congress that the National Security Agency was not collecting data on millions of Americans. Snowden's disclosures, which were given to journalist Glenn Greenwald and detailed how the agency was amassing citizens' phone records and internet data, proved this claim to be false.
After traveling from the United States to Hong Kong and meeting with journalists in June 2013, Snowden fled the country with the help of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks and ended up in Russia, where he was granted asylum and has lived since.
In 2019, Snowden said he wanted to return to the U.S. but would only do so if he was assured that he would face a fair trial, which he noted was unlikely.
"If I'm gonna spend the rest of my life in prison, the one bottom line demand that we have to agree to is that at least I get a fair trial," Snowden told CBS. "And that is the one thing the government has refused to guarantee because they won't provide access to what's called a public interest defense."
While the attorney general had administrative power to pardon people from 1853 to 1870, the responsibility has since been delegated to the Office of the Pardon Attorney within the Department of Justice. Even so, decisions to pardon are often made in consultation with the attorney general.
Now, as the potential next attorney general, Gaetz can bring his fight to pardon Snowden to light.
On September 3, 2020, Gaetz posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, "Pardon @Snowden."
A day later, on his podcast, Gaetz said: "As of today, the case has never been stronger that Edward Snowden deserves a pardon from President Trump. I would support a pardon for Edward Snowden. If it were not for Snowden, we might not know today that our own government was engaged in an activity that now a federal appellate court has deemed illegal."
At the time, Gaetz was not the only member of Congress calling for Trump to pardon Snowden. Multiple Republican politicians suggested the former NSA contractor should be allowed to return to the U.S. without facing legal consequences.
Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney tweeted that pardoning Snowden would be "unconscionable" while characterizing the exiled American as a "traitor."
"The Cheney ideology supporting forever wars puts more troops at risk than @Snowden ever did," Gaetz tweeted back. The same day, Gaetz said Trump was "listening" to those urging a Snowden pardon and asserted it was the "right thing to do."
Gaetz posted about the subject after Greenwald tweeted that a Snowden pardon would be a "victory" against abuses by various three-letter agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In December 2021, Gaetz said he had lobbied extensively with Trump. The former president allegedly "felt better about Snowden than [Julian] Assange."
This goes against what Snowden tweeted in 2020, suggesting that if Trump were to issue one act of clemency before leaving office, it should be to free Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who is now battling extradition to the U.S. over his own releases of sensitive information.
"I regret we didn't make it happen," Gaetz posted.
Georgia Representative Mike Collins responded at the time that they "may get another chance."
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