Snowden Defends Gabbard Amid Confirmation Fight

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden weighed in Friday on the nomination of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, following Thursday's contentious confirmation hearing in the Senate.

"Her sin is that she told the truth about the government spying on Americans, and for that she is getting absolutely persecuted," Snowden wrote in a post on the social platform X.

Snowden's post paraphrased comments made by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., during an interview with Fox News on Thursday, and video of Hawley's appearance was shared by Snowden in the post.

Senators grilled Gabbard during Thursday's hearing over her stance on Snowden and his infamous 2013 theft of more than a million classified documents which revealed that the NSA was secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Americans.

Seven years after Snowden revealed the NSA's mass surveillance program, an appeals court ruled it was illegal.

In response to lawmakers' questioning about her views on Snowden, Gabbard responded by saying she is "focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again."

After the hearing, several Republican senators told The Hill that Gabbard's confirmation might be in jeopardy, with one saying, "People are holding their cards pretty close to the vest."

In a Thursday post on X before Gabbard's confirmation hearing began, Snowden said she would be "required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today."

"I encourage her to do so," he said. "Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that's what passes for the Pledge of Allegiance."

Since fleeing the country, Snowden has become an outspoken critic of the U.S. intelligence community and, in 2022, became a naturalized Russian citizen.

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