Edward Snowden has brought in a health $1.25m in speaking fees ever since he jumped on a plane to Hong Kong with a treasure trove of NSA secrets, a new court filing [PDF] has revealed.
The whistleblower, who exposed mass surveillance of American citizens and foreigners by the US government by handing over top-secret documents to journalists before escaping to Moscow, earns an average of $18,745 per engagement. And Uncle Sam wants it – all of it.
The Feds subpoenaed Snowden’s booking agent, American Program Bureau, based in Massachusetts, insisting on a full rundown of engagements it had booked him for. The prosecution has added the list of 67 speeches, complete with fees and clients, to its lawsuit seeking to strip Snowden of any money earned through his actions.
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With the monetary value of Snowden’s speaking tours now laid out of the table, it’s hard not to imagine that Donald Trump doesn’t have a figure in mind.
The US government has already won the right to claim all royalties from Snowden’s book and speeches after a district court awarded it all proceeds. The lawyers are now trying to figure out what those sums are.
Snowden has refused formal requests to provide all relevant information about his earnings, resulting in a magistrate deciding that the government can effectively decide what he had earned. His publisher agreed to hand over royalties from his book, although not the advance it paid him to write it.
Amazingly though having revoked his passport you’d think they also revoked his tax paying requirements with it
Robin Edgar
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