WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
said Thursday that the United States was willing to discuss how the
criminal case against Edward J. Snowden would be handled, but only if
Mr. Snowden pleaded guilty first.
Mr.
Holder, speaking at a question-and-answer event at the University of
Virginia, did not specify the guilty pleas the Justice Department would
expect before it would open talks with Mr. Snowden’s lawyers. And the
attorney general reiterated that the United States was not willing to
offer clemency to Mr. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has leaked documents that American officials have said threaten national security.
“Instead,”
Mr. Holder said in response to a question at the university’s Miller
Center, “were he coming back to the U.S. to enter a plea, we would
engage with his lawyers.”
Calls
for clemency for Mr. Snowden, who has taken refuge in Moscow, have
increased in the last several months as some civil liberties groups and
prominent news organizations, including an editorial in The New York Times, have asked the government to consider such a move.
That argument has gained momentum with recent moves to curtail the programs that Mr. Snowden revealed. President Obama this month embraced some calls to overhaul certain N.S.A. activities brought to light by Mr. Snowden.
In particular, Mr. Obama said that he would impose greater court
oversight on the once-secret program in which the agency has been
collecting records of every American’s phone calls, and that he intended
to eventually get the N.S.A. out of the business of gathering such
records in bulk.
“I absolutely think the tide has changed for Snowden,” Jesselyn Radack, a legal adviser to Mr. Snowden and a lawyer with the Government Accountability Project, said last month. “All of these things taken together counsel in favor of some sort of amnesty or pardon.”
Mr.
Holder ruled out that possibility on Thursday. “We’ve always indicated
that the notion of clemency isn’t something that we were willing to
consider,” he said, adding that any discussions with Mr. Snowden’s
lawyers would be the “same with any defendant who wanted to enter a plea
of guilty.”
Some
lawmakers have also softened their stance on how Mr. Snowden’s case
should be handled. “I don’t think Edward Snowden deserves a death
penalty or life in prison; I think that’s inappropriate, and I think
that’s why he fled, because that’s what he faced,” Senator Rand Paul,
Republican of Kentucky, has said.
“I
think, really, in the end,” Mr. Paul added, “history’s going to judge
that he revealed great abuses of our government and great abuses of our
intelligence community” by exposing the broad sweep of electronic
surveillance by the N.S.A.
Mr. Paul said he favored “a fair trial with a reasonable sentence.”
Senator
Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said that if Mr. Snowden
considered himself part of the “grand tradition of civil disobedience in
this country,” he should return to stand trial. Such a legal
proceeding, the senator said, could be enlightening for the country.
Correction: January 25, 2014
An article on Friday about whether the United States is willing to discuss how to handle the criminal case against Edward J. Snowden misstated the position of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York on the future of Mr. Snowden. Mr. Schumer has said Mr. Snowden should return to stand trial; he has not called on the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency.
An article on Friday about whether the United States is willing to discuss how to handle the criminal case against Edward J. Snowden misstated the position of Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York on the future of Mr. Snowden. Mr. Schumer has said Mr. Snowden should return to stand trial; he has not called on the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency.
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