Defense lawyers for Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents using the online gaming site Discord, recently argued that he should get bail because he was no Edward Snowden. Their arguments were misleading at best, and easily contradicted by a simple Google search. They claimed, for example, that "Mr. Snowden fled the [United States] prior to any arrest" and was already in China at the time his documents were leaked to the media.
Snowden didn't "flee the country." When he traveled to Hong Kong on May 10, 2013, there were no criminal charges against him. There was no arrest warrant. He had a valid U.S. passport. He left the United States a free man.
