So you had the Republican establishment that never liked Trump, that never supported Trump. And demanding that he not pardon Assange or Snowden, it was an incredibly high priority to them. The problem is he wasn't listening to people like Marco Rubio or warmongers or Liz Cheney. He was listening to people like Rand Paul and that Gaetz, those were the people who were supporting him. Now what I heard at the time was that the only meaningful impediment to a pardon. The only person who had Trump's ear that was really being effective in arguing against it was Mike Pompeo, who was the director of the CIA and the person most responsible for the prosecution of Assange under the Trump presidency and then became the secretary of state.

As I've often said, Pompeo was a neocon who manipulated and deceived Trump by flattering him and staying in his good graces. So Pompeo was the one who was the one we knew we had to overcome in the transition. But there were enough people pushing Trump that we started to hear and believe based on very good, reliable information, that there was more than a 50 percent chance that Snowden was going to pardon Trump and less than 50 percent, but very far from zero, that he would pardon Assange.

What happened, they brought a second impeachment trial against him after January six. They brought in impeachment proceedings against the president, who they knew they had no time to impeach and remove from office. Why would they do that? It never made any sense from that perspective. Why would you try and impeach somebody who is obviously going to be leaving the White House before you have a chance to impeach them?

The reason is because that Republicans leverage over Trump, being able to say to him, we know you want to do things like pardoning Edward Snowden and are considering Julian Assange and are considering declassifying CIA documents from 60 years ago about the JFK assassination and other matters that we don't want you to do. And now we have leverage over you.

If you do something like pardoning Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, we will vote to convict you in that impeachment trial that will render you potentially barred from seeking office in the future. You will have been the first president or the second president and the first president in over a century to be impeached and then convicted. It was a serious threat that Trump wanted to avoid. And the Republicans like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, who were working with Liz Cheney to prevent these pardons, suddenly had a lot of leverage over Trump.