Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that if he is elected to the White House, he remains committed to pardoning National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden on his first day in office.
In a petition released on Monday (Apr. 1), Kennedy called on US President Joe Biden to pardon Snowden. In 2013, Snowden visited Hong Kong and exposed classified NSA documents that revealed the US government was spying on its citizens. He was then charged with theft of government property.
"Snowden performed a critical public service by revealing to Americans for the first time that our government had been spying on us, millions of law-abiding American citizens, in violation of numerous laws and of our fundamental right to privacy," Kennedy said in a video attached to the petition.
Fox News Digital reported that Snowden is now a Russian citizen after seeking asylum and was stranded inside the country following the release of the documents.
Washington revoked his passport as he was attempting to make the trip to his intended final destination, Latin America, where he planned to stay to avoid US prosecution for taking thousands of classified documents from the NSA and leaking them to the press.
The information included the mass collection of Americans' metadata, allowing the government to see when and to whom a phone call or message was sent.
Snowden has not left Russia since.
The video also featured a compilation of comments made by former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, all of whom criticized Snowden as a traitor.
"Prior to Edward Snowden, nobody knew that the intelligence agencies were illegally mining all of our data and spying on American citizens," Kennedy added. "So it's not surprising that those same intelligence agencies are now trying to portray Snowden as a criminal and that captive politicians are supporting that narrative."
He further called Snowden a "hero," a word he also extended to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
"Instead of jailing Snowden, I'm going to build a statue to him and maybe to Julian Assange somewhere near the Washington Press Club or perhaps outside the CIA headquarters in Langley as a civics lesson to the Republic," RFK Jr. added.
Kennedy previously said he would pardon Snowden and Assange, who was held in a maximum security London prison and fighting extradition to the US on espionage charges for publishing classified military documents in 2010.
"It's time that we return our government to the democratic and humanitarian ideals that we've always represented as a nation," he added. "Let's go back to championing free speech and celebrating truth-tellers and the whistleblowers who put their careers and their own freedom on the line to protect ours."
Kennedy has long criticized US intelligence agencies, saying he was supporting the reverence of "[t]uth-tellers who champion free speech and try to return America to its democratic and humanitarian ideals."
He also insisted last month that he would not comment on pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters until he gets elected to office.
However, Kennedy recently told CNN that Biden was a greater threat to democracy than former president Donald Trump.
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