White House Responds to Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden - East Idaho News
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White House Responds to Petition to Pardon Edward Snowden

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getty 072815 edwardsnowden?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1438098281196MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — The White House isn’t interested in pardoning NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
 
The president’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco responded Tuesday to a petition calling for Snowden to be pardoned, saying that he should return to the U.S. to “be judged by a jury of his peers” rather than “running away from the consequences of his actions.”
 
“If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and — importantly — accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he’s running away from the consequences of his actions,” Monaco writes a newly posted response.  

[Read the full response from the White House]

 Since being posted in June on 2013, the petition has gained over 160,000 signatures through the White House’s “We the People” petition site.

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