Trump says he's considering giving Edward Snowden a pardon

President Donald Trump stated on Saturday that he is considering giving a pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Snowden has been living in Russia for a number of years, avoiding being charged for leaking sensitive information on a National Security Agency tech program known as PRISM.

The Daily Wire reported that Snowden leaked the information to American journalists back in 2013, using a network of people involved in Wikileaks as go-betweens. Snowden revealed that the federal government was actively collecting meta-data from Americans' cellphones in a so-called effort to combat terrorism.

The issue is that PRISM never proved to provide any kind of results that led to the capture of terrorists. The data-collecting program that was under the watch of the NSA has, according to the New York Times, fallen into disuse and is now out of operation.

Trump shared with reporters last week that "there are a lot of people that think that [Snowden] is not being treated fairly," adding that he is considering giving the whistleblower a pardon despite him not yet facing any charged.

“I’m going to start looking at it,” Trump said.

“It seems to be a split decision,” Trump noted, drawing out the split decision about what people feel about Snowden. “Many people think he should be somehow treated differently. And other people think he did very bad things.”

Trump appears to have gone back on his initial position on Snowden from 2013, where he suggested that he was "a spy who should be executed."

Among those who stand with Snowden is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who tweeted: "I’m one of them. ?@Snowden? revealed that Trump-haters Clapper and Comey among others were illegally spying on Americans. Clapper lied to Congress about it."

“Snowden fled the United States and was given asylum in Russia after he leaked a trove of secret files in 2013 to news organizations that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA,” Reuters reports.

“Snowden’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told RIA news agency the United States should not simply pardon him but should drop all possible prosecutions against Snowden as he had not committed any crimes.”