He’s still young. If they don’t kill him, he has a good chance of outliving the United States.
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Also (and très l’esprit de l’escalier), perhaps you should point this out to Putin, not me.
I’m pretty sure Putin is aware it isn’t the Soviet Union. If it was, he wouldn’t be getting away with half of his shit.
Ed,
You need to quietly disappear. Get some cash and gear together and GTFO. Facing trial in the US will result in you going to jail until you are in your 70s.
Boundegar:
But he is certainly guaranteed a fair trial by the US Constitution.
The Constitution is busy dying the death of a thousand cuts. He will get something that scrupulous obeys all current laws as written, but it won’t help him. The only real question was if they would give him the death penalty, or settle for life without parole.
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GTFO somewhere without getting black-bagged in transit and carted back to the States is the trick. Doubtful unless he GTFOs on a Russian naval vessel, I’d imagine.
He has to move before somebody does it for him. The Russians will eventually give him up, when they need exchange material.
If you actually read the articles about this or what Snowden has said before, the main issue is that there is no justification defense under the Espionage Act (and any testimony probably wouldn’t be allowed out of the court room anyway). He could prove in court that he exposed illegal and unconstitutional spying on the American people and even if others had been convicted of those crimes, that wouldn’t be a legal defense under the Espionage Act.
So, he’s basically saying “If you promise to give me a fair trial and not do it under the Espionage Act, we can negotiate for me to come home and face trial. If I have no legal defense and will get life in prison no matter what, I’m not coming back.”
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The sarcasm wasn’t needed, you know. You’re agreeing with me.
I find it interesting that we consider the Espionage Act “ancient” when it was written in 1917 and amended multiple times; what is invoked by critiics is the parts of the law that are patiently irrelevant, and ignores the largest portion…
If it’s not relevant, then the Obama administration is huge violator, having charges seven people with varying results since 2010. A few cases of non-prosecution and plea bargain puts the lie to the privilege strawman.
It is a law almost entirely used during the near century of its existence to target legitimate dissent.
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I’m not sure what be “patient” has to do with thing either.
The word should be “patently”
Spellcheck for the win!
Manning and Snowden were the only cases which could be construed as dissident action out of 12 men arrested for Espionage Act- and the most recent cases as well.
I do not think this qualifies as almost entirely.
Try looking at the entire period since 1917, not just the last two years or something.
For example, Kate Richards O’Hare:
There are quite a few similar cases. That act was largely used to squash political dissent (or to catch Soviet related spying, to be fair).
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Thomas Watts Gregory was the Attorney General in 1918. The case you quote was prosecuted by his under-attorneys- among several other “loose cannon” actions, which caused Gregory specifically order them not to act without his approval.
After WWII, which included a handful of dissent prosecutions, the prosecutions turned to genuine espionage. So we’re talking 25 years of questionable cases verses 72 years worth of many espionage cases, so by time frame or number of cases, your “almost entirely” argument is still highly problematic. That is derived from the Wiki article, which I am familiar with.
Snowden has to deal with the law as it is today. That’s why I mentioned the multiple amendments of the law.
Ellsberg, Manning and Snowden are examples of genuine actions, not free speech
Whatever “genuine actions” means. They were whistleblowers, as were others.
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