Tulsi Gabbard Urges Trump to ‘Please Consider’ Pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden

WHISTLEBLOWING - SURVEILLANCE, 30 Nov 2020

Matt Mathers | Independent - TRANSCEND Media Service

29 Nov 2020 – Democrat lawmaker, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, has urged Donald Trump to pardon the whistleblower Edward Snowden and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Rep. Gabbard, representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional and former presidential candidate, called on the president to reconsider the cases of the two men, both of whom have been charged under the Espionage Act.

Her call comes after Mr Trump pardoned his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who twice admitted lying to the FBI.

Despite misleading prosecutors about his contacts with Russia, Flynn, 61, later retracted his guilty plea, claiming that he was set up by the federal agency.

Democrats widely condemned Mr Trump’s Thanksgiving Eve pardon, with House speaker Nancy Pelosi branding it a “brazen abuse of power”.

The pardon did not go unnoticed by Rep Gabbard, who has previously called for the charges against Snowden and Assange to be dropped.

“Since you’re giving pardons to people,” she tweeted on Thursday, “Please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality of those in the deep state”.

Rep. Gabbard has previously campaigned for the release of Snowden and Assange. Last month, she put forward a bipartisan bill seeking to make changes to the Espionage Act, which was ushered in shortly after World War I.

“Brave whistleblowers exposing lies and illegal actions in our government must be protected,” she said in a video to promote the legislation.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Trump will pardon either man.

Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, is charged with two counts of violating the Espionage Act.

He fled the US for Russia in 2013 after leaking secret information about domestic and national surveillance programs carried out by the NSA.

Snowden, 37, earlier this month announced that he plans to apply for Russian citizenship while signalling his intention to hang onto his US nationality.

During his re-election campaign, the president said he would “take a look” at pardoning Snowden. Any such move is unlikely to go down well with defense and security hawks, who view people like Snowden as traitors rather than truth-seekers.

Meanwhile, Assange is charged with 17 violations of the Espionage Act, one of the most serious crimes in US law with penalties of up to 175 years in prison.

He has been accused of conspiring to commit computer intrusion in order to assist Chelsea Manning with the intention of getting access to classified military information and publishing it on his Wikileaks website.

A warrant for Assange’s arrest was issued by the Swedish Prosecutor’s office in 2010 accusing him of rape and molestation.

Assange, 49, fled to London where he was holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy before his arrest in May 2019. After his arrest, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in prison and is being held at Belmarsh’s high security prison in London.

“Associates” of the president are alleged to have offered Assange a pardon in return for the source of damaging emails about Hillary Clinton leaked on his website in the 2016 election campaign, claims denied by the White House.

Assange’s girlfriend and lawyer, Stella Morris, called on the president to pardon him so he could come home in time for Christmas to see his children.

“These are Julian’s sons Max and Gabriel. They need their father. Our family needs to be whole again,” she wrote in a tweet on Thursday.

“I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.”

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Representing Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District, Tulsi Gabbard is a combat veteran, first Hindu and first female of Samoan ancestry to ever serve as a member of the U.S. Congress. She was born in Leloaloa, American Samoa in 1981, the fourth of five children.

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One Response to “Tulsi Gabbard Urges Trump to ‘Please Consider’ Pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden”

1. Gary Steven Corseri says:

   2 Dec 2020 at 06:56

   In my opinion, Tulsi Gabbard was, by far, the best Democrat candidate running in the primaries for the Presidential election of 2020. She didn’t have a real chance because, like Trump, she’s anti-endless-wars. While Deep State is divided about which Endless War it wants to fight now and in the future, it is united in its appetite for the Endless Wars that fuel and fund the Military Industrial Complex about which Eisenhower warned us in his last speech to the nation before doomed John F. Kennedy was sworn into office and–so the story goes!–assassinated before thousands of people by a no-good Commie with a mail-order rifle….

   Despite the glut of information that the Internet provides, and the social media tidbits that slow and fatten us, we haven’t learned much, in the past 60 years, about the way our System actually works! “The peanut-munching crowd,” as poet Sylvia Plath put it, watches the football players butt heads within their hundred yards, and our politicians and pseudo “journalists” and “educators” butt heads within the boundaries of Congress, state and local governments, wide-screens and “smart” phones.

   Assange, Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Oliver Stone and Tulsi Gabbard are among the too few who have challenged our corrupt systems of government and business and tried, against all odds, to alert those still mentally active, to the “clear and present” dangers that dull our neurons now.

   Thanks to Matt Mathers for publishing this article at the “Independent,” and thanks to Transcend Media Service for posting it here!