Pardoning a wide swath of people at a furious clip, 74-year-ol President Donald Trump takes seriously his pardon authority, one of the last powers remaining in his lame-duck presidency. While the list of pardon goes on, a theme has emerged related to the U.S. spy agencies that relentless harassed Trump during his four years in office. Trump famously said in 2016 that former President Barack Obama “tapped his wires,” creating a tsunami of outrage by Democrats and the press demanding proof. That’s the exact same reaction they had to Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged, stolen from him by an organized conspiracy of Democrat election officials in battleground states, determined to deny him a second term. Demanding proof, Trump finds himself on the short end of the stick, unable to prove what many people don’t want to admit: That the 2020 presidential elect was fixed.
Yet when Trump said “his wires were tapped” in 2016, he was mocked by Democrats and the press, which of course turned out to be true. Trump “wires” were not only tapped, the FBI had opened up a counterintelligence investigation, initiated by former CIA Director John Brennan and the late Sen. John McCain. How much does the public need to know or see about the outrageous abuse of the U.S. intel and law enforcement communities under Obama’s direction to prevent Trump from becoming president in 2016. Three years before, May 20, 2013 37-year-old Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong to escaped U.S. law enforcement, charging him with espionage for outing thousands of government files proving the National Security Agency [NSA] spied on its own citizens. Trump’s parallel to Snowden is pretty clear: Trump was the victim of an illegal FBI spying operation.
Former FBI Director James Comey bristled when former Atty. Gen. Bill Barr said April 10, 2019 that the FBI spied on Trump and his campaign. Comey of course denies the charges, insisting he had probable cause to launch a counterintelligence investigation AKA “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Comey’s “probable cause” was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s paid opposition research AKA “The Steele Dossier,” filled with lies and fabrications tying Trump to the Kremlin. Comey used Hillary’s rubbish to dupe the Foreign Intelligence and Sureveillance Act [FISA] Court into issuing warrants to wiretap Trump campaign aids like Carter Page. But with all the evidence showing the worst abuse of the national security apparatus in U.S. history to illegally harass a major party candidate, nothing happened to Comey and all the other Obama officials involved in the conspiracy.
Trump knows more than anyone what it’s like to be the victim of an illegal Department of Justice, FBI, CIA and National Security Agency [NSA] spying operation. So, whatever some Republicans think of Snowden’s illegal theft of electronic U.S. government files while working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Honolulu proving U.S. government surveillance on its citizens. Trump’s actively considering a pardon for Snowden currently living at an unknown location in Moscow where he fled after Hong Kong to escape June 23, 2013 to Moscow, where he was eventually granted permanent residency status by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Snowden hasn’t returned to the U.S. to face trial for violating the July 15, 1917 Espionage Act. Snowden has said he wants to return to the states, where many people consider him a heroic whistleblower, not a renegade traitor for stealing U.S. secrets.
Trump has a big decision to make in the next four weeks about granting a pardon to Snowden. There’s no one Trump could pardon more historically significant that Snowden because of his own personal experience with abuse of the U.S. spy machine. When you consider Obama, former Vice President and now President-elect Joe Biden and the entire national security team was present Jan. 5, 2017 Oval Office meeting to plot setting up former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Trump should have no doubt he must pardon Snowden. Trump’s attorney general failed to get him justice for the grotesque abuse of U.S. spy agencies to prevent him from becoming president. Once president, Trump was persecuted by Democrats and the FBI for four years, accusing him of the same rubbish in Hillary’s dossier. No one connected to the illegal spying operation has faced U.S. justice.
Pardoning Snowden would send the exact right message to the former Obama administration and all U.S. law enforcement and intel agencies that participated in the illegal spying operation against Trump and his campaign. With Biden sworn in Jan. 20, 2021, Trump has no chance at getting justice, especially with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress. Trump has one last shot in the arsenal to use his pardon power to stick it to the U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies. Trump got no satisfaction from Barr’s investigation with U..S. Atty. John Durham (R-Conn.) into the origin of the illegal spying operation against him. Pardoning Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would send the most powerful historic statement to U.S. law enforcement and intel agencies that went wild after Sept. 11 but now mush be reigned in to save U.S. democracy.
