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Trump set to pardon a 'very, very important person' but says it's not Edward Snowden or Michael Flynn

After calling Snowden a 'traitor' Trump had recently said that he was considering a pardon of Snowden, who leaked classified documents about government surveillance

President Donald Trump on Monday, August 17, said he was set to pardon a “very, very important” person on Tuesday, August 18, but added that it would not be former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden or former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

Last Saturday, August 15, Trump took a U-turn from his previous stance to say that he was considering a pardon of Snowden, who leaked classified documents about government surveillance. Snowden fled the country and has been in Russia since 2013. Before the 2016 election, Trump called the man a "traitor" who he thought should be executed. 

Trump said favorable words on Snowden in NY Post interview

Even on Thursday, August 13, Trump said in an interview with The New York Post: “There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that.” The 37-year-old Snowden has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and faced a long prison sentence before leaving the US. He said he will not come back while facing the charges. Snowden tweeted a link of that interview to say: “The last time we heard a White House considering a pardon was 2016 when the very same Attorney General who once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA's unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been "a public service"."

In 2016, Obama said he would not consider a pardon till Snowden stopped running away from the law. In March 2014, Snowden wrote during testimony in European Parliament that before revealing the classified information, he had reported “clearly problematic programs” to 10 officials who he claimed did nothing in response to NSA’s legality of spying missions. In an NBC interview the same year, he said he was told to be silent on the concerns.

On Saturday, Trump said at a news conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey: “There are many, many people — it seems to be a split decision — many people think that he should be somehow be treated differently and other people think he did very bad things.” He said he was going to take a “very good look at it.” 

On Monday, however, Trump did not take Snowden’s name while telling reporters on board Air Force One about him pardoning somebody “very, very important” on Tuesday, according to the White House press pool.

Flynn, who was Trump’s first NSA but could survive in office for less than a month, pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about the former Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak. Recently, the justice department sought to drop the case against Flynn, a move that was criticized by former President Barack Obama and led to a full-fledged war of words between the two administrations. 

While journalist Mark Knoller said on Twitter said Trump made the announcement to divert attention from the Democratic National Convention that kicked off on Monday, another journalist Sam Stein said he would grant posthumous clemency to Marcus Garvey who was convicted in mail fraud and died in 1940.

In July, Trump used his presidential power to commute the sense of Roger Stone, his longtime ally and adviser who was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers probing Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.