Sen. Ted Cruz abruptly pivoted this week from his cautious embrace of Edward Snowden’s disclosures, announcing he now considers the exiled whistleblower guilty of treason -- and not everyone's pleased.

"It is now clear that Snowden is a traitor, and he should be tried for treason,” Cruz said in a statement published Wednesday by The New York Times.

"Today, we know that Snowden violated federal law, that his actions materially aided terrorists and enemies of the United States, and that he subsequently fled to China and Russia," Cruz said. "Under the Constitution, giving aid to our enemies is treason."

Cruz, now running second to businessman Donald Trump in many Republican presidential nomination polls, sang a different tune in 2013, when Snowden provided journalists classified documents that exposed the now-ended dragnet collection of domestic call records along with vast Internet surveillance programs and international wiretaps affecting entire countries.

“If it is the case that the federal government is seizing millions of personal records about law-abiding citizens, and if it is the case that there are minimal restrictions on accessing or reviewing those records, then I think Mr. Snowden has done a considerable public service by bringing it to light,” Cruz said at the time. “If Mr. Snowden has violated the laws of this country, there are consequences to violating laws and that is something he has publicly stated he understands and I think the law needs to be enforced.”



The older statement reflected an approach common among civil liberties-conscious politicians, such as fellow Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has joked about Snowden sharing a cell with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who inaccurately told Congress that Americans were not subject to mass data-collection programs.

Cruz's new position aligns him with the loud claims of treason from GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who calls Snowden “a total traitor,” and also with establishment politicians in both parties who reacted with horror to Snowden’s disclosures.

“It's sad that Mr. Cruz chose to score political points by bashing a whistleblower, especially because before it was an election year, Cruz said Snowden had done a public service by bringing mass surveillance to light,” says attorney Jesselyn Radack, who represents Snowden and several other National Security Agency whistleblowers.

“It's ironic Cruz would call Snowden a traitor while at the same time Cruz regularly and vigorously defends his 'yea' vote for USA Freedom Act, a reform that only happened because Snowden had the courage to come forward,” she says.

The Freedom Act ended the bulk collection of U.S. call records that the Bush and Obama administrations secretly performed leaning on an expansive interpretation of the Patriot Act. Many members of Congress said they did not know about that program, or about other facts exposed by Snowden that generally are not readily accessible to lawmakers, such as the budgets for various intelligence agencies.



Though Snowden has many prominent defenders -- who point out he is not living in Russia by choice and that if he returned he likely would be barred from explaining at trial why he leaked the documents -- he's not necessarily embraced by the American public, even though people appear to broadly agree with his stand against mass surveillance.