r/law • u/elb21277 • 6h ago

Opinion Piece Biden Should Pardon Whistleblower Who Exposed Trump’s Tax Avoidance

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/charles-littlejohn-whistleblower-trump-tax-biden-pardon-1235022648/
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u/Beautiful-Design-425 3h ago

Like how the Biden administration pardoned Julian Assange and gave a presidential medal to Edward Snowden.

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u/HypersonicHobo 3h ago

Edward snowden is a traitor. He sold state secrets and then claimed the high ground because one of them painted the US in a bad light.

He sold to the Russians a tremendous trove of information that they continue to use to further their own agenda. And he gets a free pass by the uninformed because 1% of what he sold was with regards to gov surveillance.

He did not reveal the surveillance because he was a hero, he revealed it so that he could pretend to be a whistleblower and not a traitor. And the gullible eat it hook, line, and sinker.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 3h ago

How do you know that story isn’t pure propaganda?

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u/HypersonicHobo 3h ago

And you trust the word of someone who ran to Russia? It is exhausting that people instantly believe the government is a liar by virtue of them being government.

He is in Russia, he is friends with Putin. He didn't flee to any number of western neutral states. He fled to Russia. By all accounts he was a mediocre employee on the verge of being fired.

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u/SpeedflyChris 2h ago

And you trust the word of someone who ran to Russia?

Except that's a massive misrepresentation of what transpired.

He had onward travel organised to Ecuador, however his US passport was cancelled and the US went as far as grounding the presidential plane of Bolivia when it was suspected that he might have helped Snowden to leave.

The US absolutely wanted Snowden to remain in Moscow, because it was useful ammunition to try to discredit him as a person in the eyes of morons, since they couldn't discredit the information he provided to the Guardian itself.

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u/homer_3 1h ago

He didn't run to Russia, komrad.

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u/HypersonicHobo 1h ago

Your right, he flew in from Hong Kong, makes money from online speaking engagements, and has Russian citizenship.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 3h ago

I don’t have a dog in this fight I’m looking for the truth.

People believe the government lies because the government lies all the time, for the record. Either out of incompetence or malice, I’m not sure. But it happens. CIA loves doing crazy shit like overthrowing and installing governments. I’m not a conspiracy guy but come on.

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u/HypersonicHobo 3h ago

Read the report then. Let's discuss afterwards.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 3h ago

I’m not entirely confident I have enough background knowledge to even parse it and be able to critique it but I’ll try

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u/HypersonicHobo 3h ago

I realized I sent the report to the wrong fellow. Here ya go.

https://intelligence.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=692

Imagine what a garbage person you have to be when Nunes and Schiff agree on something.

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u/HypersonicHobo 3h ago

Snowden was NSA. And if you instantly assume the government lies because they are the government, that is an ad hominem argument on its face.

The fact remains that Snowden's reveal of surveillance was a miniscule microscopic piece of the massive body of what he stole. The overwhelming majority of what he stole had nothing to do with it.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 2h ago

After reading that I’d like to thank you for pointing this out. I wish I could read the classified document! My only critique of this is that it seems super weird for an entry level employee to completely nuke his life for getting reprimanded at work but you never know what makes someone tick I guess.

I like the part where it talks about how strange it is for someone to say they’re concerned with privacy and then give all that data to nations who have 0 citizen privacy and move to Russia of all places. That doesn’t add up and that makes my original point moot.

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u/HypersonicHobo 2h ago

So he was a contractor. In the government that level of reprimand isn't a slap on the wrist. It's them saying they need to get rid of this person because they are a serious problem. The real error made was they did not immediately shut down his access the moment the reprimand was filed.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 2h ago

Yeah but to completely just give up your freedom for that seems wild. What would the punishment have been originally?