The Snowden leaks didn't demonstrate "massive violations of US Law."
Essentially one documents out of thousand upon thousands really exposed an illegal program (phone meta-data), and even that was done under a good faith legal theory. It took several court cases to find it was against the law. If he just released that FISA order, it would still be illegal, but there would at least by a good argument to not prosecute
He released tons of information about stuff that nobody would credibly think was illegal. Instead he released stuff that exposed spying on foreign countries, the raison d'être of the NSA, and he did it because he was ideologically against spyign. And that's why the DOJ has to go after him.
Essentially one documents out of thousand upon thousands really exposed an illegal program (phone meta-data), and even that was done under a good faith legal theory. It took several court cases to find it was against the law. If he just released that FISA order, it would still be illegal, but there would at least by a good argument to not prosecute
He released tons of information about stuff that nobody would credibly think was illegal. Instead he released stuff that exposed spying on foreign countries, the raison d'être of the NSA, and he did it because he was ideologically against spyign. And that's why the DOJ has to go after him.