The Democratic Party, more so than any other major voting bloc, is willing to support giving NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden a full presidential pardon, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
A plurality of Democrats surveyed, 39 percent, said they would support President Obama letting Snowden off the hook.
A fraction fewer Democrats, 38 percent, were opposed to clemency, while 23 percent either didn’t know or didn’t have an opinion on the matter.
The results were published by Morning Consult polling.
The administration has adamantly denied any plans to let the former contractor back into the US without facing charges, despite his exposure of illegal NSA spying.
In a response to a public petition calling for a presidential pardon for Snowden, the President’s Advisor on Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Lisa Monaco, called his disclosures “dangerous” and said they had “severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.”
She called on Snowden, who is currently living in asylum in Russia, to “come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers.”
Snowden and others have doubted the prospects of a fair trial upon his return, noting that the espionage charges pending against him prohibit defendants from mounting a whistleblowing defense.
The White House’s position on Snowden falls more in line with the whims of Republicans voters, who, by a wide majority—57 percent to 24 percent—are opposed to letting him walk free, according to the poll.
Among Independents, a narrow 36 percent of voters opposed a pardon, while 35 percent are in support.
Like the party’s rank-and-file, those vying to be the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee are also sharply split.
Towing the administration’s line in an interview in February, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she could “never condone” what Snowden did, adding that he “stole millions of documents” that “had nothing to do with civil liberties.”
In a statement issued last January, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that although there is “no debate” that Mr. Snowden broke the law, “the interests of justice would be best served if our government granted him some form of clemency or a plea agreement that would spare him a long prison sentence or permanent exile from the country whose freedoms he cared enough about to risk his own freedom.”
A poll released this week shows the socialist Senators with a lead over Clinton in the early primary state of New Hampshire—a labor friendly state that borders Sanders’ own state, Vermont.
Another Democratic contender, former Rhode Island Governor and Senator Lincoln Chaffee made bringing Snowden home free of charges a part of his campaign platform.
