Snowden receives Russian passport, takes citizenship oath

MOSCOW

Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who fled prosecution after revealing highly classified surveillance programs, has received a Russian passport and taken the citizenship oath, Russian news agencies quoted his lawyer as saying Friday.

Lawyer Anatoly Kucherena was reported as saying that Snowden got the passport and took the oath on Thursday, about three months after Russian President Vladimir Putin granted him citizenship.

The reports did not specify whether Snowden has renounced his U.S. citizenship. The United States revoked his passport in 2013, leading to Snowden being stranded in a Moscow

airport for weeks after arriving from Hong Kong, aiming to reach Ecuador.

Russia eventually granted him permanent residency. He married American Lindsay Mills in 2017 and the couple has two children.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price said Friday that the U.S. was aware of reports Snowden had finalized his Russian citizenship but could not confirm them, and referred questions about his status to the Russian government. However, Price said the Biden administration would not be surprised if the reports

Snowden were correct.

“Mr. Snowden has long signaled his allegiance to Russia, this step would only formalize that,” Price told reporters.

Snowden leaked documents on the National Security Agency’s collection of data passing through the infrastructure of U.S. phone and internet companies. He also released details about the classified U.S. intelligence budget and the extent of American surveillance on foreign officials, including the leaders of U.S.-allied countries.

Snowden says he made the disclosures because he believed the U.S. intelligence community had gone too far and infringed on civil liberties.

Infowars host Alex Jones filed for personal bankruptcy protection Friday in Texas, citing debts that include nearly $1.5 billion he has been ordered to pay to families who sued him over his conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school massacre.

Jones filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Houston. His filing listed $1 billion to $10 billion in liabilities and $1 million to $10 million in assets.

Jones acknowledged the filing on his Infowars broadcast, saying the case will prove that he’s broke and asking viewers to shop on his website to help keep the show on the air.

“I’m officially out of money, personally,” Jones said. “It’s all going to be filed. It’s all going to be public. And you will see that Alex Jones has almost no cash.”

Jones, who sells dietary supplements and other items on his Infowars site and promotes them during his shows, said he would not be commenting further on the bankruptcy.

For years, Jones described the 2012 massacre as a hoax. A Connecticut jury in October awarded victims’ families $965 million in compensatory damages, and a judge later tacked on another $473 million in punitive damages. Earlier in the year, a Texas jury awarded the parents of a child killed in the shooting $49 million in damages.

The bankruptcy filing temporarily halted all proceedings in the Connecticut case. A judge was forced to cancel a hearing Friday on the Sandy Hook families’ request to secure the assets of Jones and his company to help pay the more than $1.4 billion in damages awarded there.

Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut case, criticized the bankruptcy filing.

“Like every other cowardly move Alex Jones has made, this bankruptcy will not work,” Mattei said in a statement. “The bankruptcy system does not protect anyone who engages in intentional and egregious attacks on others, as Mr. Jones did. The American judicial system will hold Alex Jones accountable, and we will never stop working to enforce the jury’s verdict.”

In the Texas and Connecticut cases, some relatives of the 20 children and six adults killed in the school shooting testified that they were threatened and harassed for years by people who believed the lies told on Jones’ show.

A third trial over Jones’ comments on Sandy Hook is expected to begin within the next two months in Texas.