Former U.S. President Donald Trump explained why he did not issue pardon decrees for the country's former intelligence agent Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
He announced this in an interview with the Daily Wire.
According to the former head of the White House, he was faced with a dilemma. “On the one hand, it’s like a spy story is happening, but on the other, someone exposed the real crimes,” Trump said, adding that he had decided to give the court the opportunity to figure it out on its own.
At the same time, the ex-leader of the United States agreed that some "bad things" made public by Assange and Snowden damaged the reputation of the United States and threw the state back.
Snowden in 2013 found himself in the center of an international scandal after the transfer of secret documents related to the program of the country's special services to spy on both Americans and citizens of other states to the journalists of The Guardian and The Washington Post. Then he fled the United States, at the same time asking for political asylum from several dozen countries, including Russia, where, as a result, he received a residence permit.