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Trump to Pardoned Former Navy Sailor: Enjoy Your Freedom

The former sailor convicted for keeping photographs of a nuclear submarine was working as a garbage collector when the president pardoned him.

President Trump on Saturday congratulated a former Navy sailor he’d pardoned a day earlier for illegally retaining photographs of top-secret areas inside a nuclear submarine. “Congratulations to Kristian Saucier, a man who has served proudly in the Navy, on your newly found Freedom. Now you can go out and have the life you deserve!” Trump wrote on Twitter. Saucier, 31, became the second person to receive a pardon from the president after former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio. He was working as a garbage collector when he learned Trump pardoned him on Friday. Saucier pleaded guilty in May 2016 to one count of unauthorized possession and retention of national defense information, and he was sentenced to a year in prison. During his presidential campaign, Trump had compared Saucier’s case to the scandal over Hillary Clinton’s private email server, questioning why the former sailor was sent to prison but Clinton was not. Trump had played down Saucier’s crime, saying he’d just “wanted to take a couple of pictures” and wound up in prison for it.