Edward Snowden needed only 140 characters to shoot down the Donald Trump campaign’s theory that FBI Director James Comey couldn’t have thoroughly reviewed Hillary Clinton’s new emails in such a short period of time.
Journalist Jeff Jarvis asked the infamous NSA whistleblower how long the process would take the NSA and Snowden answered “minutes-to-hours.”
Drop non-responsive To:/CC:/BCC:, hash both sets, then subtract those that match. Old laptops could do it in minutes-to-hours.
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 7, 2016
Comey has been at the center of the Clinton email scandals, clearing the Democratic candidate last summer before bringing a new investigation last week that turned out to be, well, nothing really. Comey announced yesterday that the new evidence doesn’t change the agency’s opinion that Clinton shouldn’t face criminal charges.
But the Trump campaign doesn’t think Comey could have reviewed the evidence so quickly.
Snowden famously copied and leaked classified information about the National Security Agency without authorization. He lives at an undisclosed location in Russia while he seeks asylum after being charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917.
The Washington Post recently shocked journalists when its editorial board came out in opposition to a pardon for Snowden, but the paper’s media columnist Margaret Sullivan sided with the former NSA contractor.
Sullivan wrote that President Obama’s administration “has an unfortunate record of prosecuting whistleblowers,” and he can fix that legacy by pardoning Snowden.