Edward Snowden’s been a guest of Vladimir Putin since June 2013.
Snowden notoriously released thousands of previously supersensitive American intelligence files, and he was, most appropriately, charged by the Obama Administration with very serious violations of our laws against espionage.
These days, Snowden, who’s married to blogger Lindsay Mills, and residing in Moscow, has nothing better to do than to break into American government records having to do with unidentified flying objects (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/23/us/edward-snowden-joe-rogan-conspiracies-trnd/index.html).
Russia has no extradition treaty with the US, and Putin’s in absolutely no hurry to turn Snowden over to us for the high crimes and misdemeanors which he’s committed.
Thus, Snowden is a pawn, but he sure as H… has messed up the lives of a lot of people. Put their lives at risk, in fact.
When our Moscow-based associate solitary reporter, Foma Xheroshonsky, asked Putin today why he won’t let Snowden leave his pad in Moscow, Putin’s response was swift and sure:
“Of course I’ll let my American asset go, but only when Donald Trump visits me in Sochi in my pleasure palace, Геленджи́к (Gelendzhik), you know, my tiny little Italianate palace, near Sochi, on the Black Sea.”
"If Trump visits me in Gelendzhik, I’ll have Snowden with me, I’ll personally turn him over to Trump, and Trump will be my guest for, shall we say, a considerable period of time.”
“Trump has helped me immeasurably, in so many ways, especially in recent days, as Erdogan and I carve up northern Syria, each of us taking what we need."