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Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

It's such a no-brainer since the national security apparatus (the FBI, NSA, etc) were used against Trump and his campaign very transparently. So you'd think he would want to strike a blow against them by pardoning Snowden.

In reality, he doesn't seem to have a deep, principled understanding of the issues of the "national security" apparatus (commonly known as the "deep state"). So I'm not optimistic, although maybe he's just waiting until after the election.

What Trump's administration is doing to Julian Assange is also quite evil (see Cassandra Fairbanks' reporting here - she's a very clear Trump supporter and yet is highly critical of his admin with respect to their treatment of Assange). It's not any more evil than what Biden or others would do, to be clear, so this isn't something unique to Trump, but we can certainly say that Trump has not shown any desire to try to do the right thing here.

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I am not saying he would pardon Snowden out of morality.

Something interesting that Snowden says is that he is not asking for a pardon, his condition for going back to the US is to drop the strict-liability qualification of his crime.

It wouldn't be something easy on him, but a judicial precedent could be even better than a pardon.

> It's such a no-brainer since the national security apparatus (the FBI, NSA, etc) were used against Trump and his campaign very transparently.

Except that Trump doesn't even bother to hide his desire to use them even more brazenly than anyone in the past (including Nixon, whose abuses prompted explicit legislative limits) for partisan political purposes; Trump definitely doesn't want to make the existence of a vast security apparatus or its partisan use an issue, only to sell himself as a victim.

> In reality, he doesn't seem to have a deep, principled understanding of the issues of the "national security" apparatus (commonly known as the "deep state").

The "deep state" is more a reference to the permanent official and unofficial establishment of public service as a whole (both the permanent civil service and the network of past and present senior, largely executive, leaders who remain in-the-loop and exert influence even when out of current office); its not particularly associated with the national security apparatus. The use of the term (except as a reference to others using the term directly) is a fairly explicit indicator that the speaker prefers a strong-man rule and factional spoils system to the rule of law and professionalism.

> It's such a no-brainer since the national security apparatus (the FBI, NSA, etc) were used against Trump and his campaign very transparently.

A Republican-led senate investigation found that the intelligence community was not used against Trump, did not illegally spy on his campaign, and was fully-correct in following up on the Russia leads. [1]

Do you have evidence that the Republican and Democratic senators did not?

1. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/513499-republicans-i...

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