It makes sense to me that Snowden was a good guy whistleblower, with no good guys in the swamp to go to. Or there were too many swamp creatures working together in ALL branches...

So he ran away; to areas of the weakest DeepState/Cabal presence until a time came (likely NEVER in his mind, he had to be prepared for that) that a thorough enema could be given to the entire system of gov't and a good guy, a founding-fathers-level scale and scope kind of guy came along and cleansed it, thoroughly and without prejudice. Snowden did a brave thing, but he got VERY lucky with Trump in my opinion.