Edward Snowden Defends Donald Trump? No Russia Hacking Evidence From FBI Yet, NSA Leaker Says

As far as infamous National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is concerned, the FBI has not presented any “real evidence” Russia directly interfered with the 2016 presidential election with the alleged intent of propping up President Donald Trump.

Speaking at a technology conference in Hanover, Germany, through a live video feed, Snowden, who’s been exiled in Russia for almost four years since he revealed the NSA’s massive domestic and international spying efforts on Americans and others, stated that while some “private vendors” have perhaps found evidence the FBI had yet to officially link President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s intelligence arms to hacking efforts.

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"We haven't seen any real evidence unfortunately out of the FBI from it, they say they have it but they haven't revealed it. We have gotten some out of private vendors, and it's reasonably convincing… But the consensus… is that this is a plausible case,” Snowden said according to Russian state-run news outlet Sputnik.

But Snowden also stated that the accusations, even without "real evidence," had sparked a dialogue about global surveillance.

“So now we can start to have a conversation about, is this appropriate?” he asked. “How do we deal with this? Where is the line between traditional espionage and interfering with elections? How we start to police these things? This is a conversation we cannot have without facts that everyone agrees on, without evidence that is well established and uncontroversial."

Trump and his campaign officials have repeatedly denied the accusations of ties to Russia. In a recent CNN/ORC poll, 65 percent of Americans said they think a special prosecutor should handle the investigation of the Trump campaign's link to Russia.

Snowden’s comments come a day after FBI director James Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that an investigation was still underway into alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia. Comey said the law enforcement agency was “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

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