Washingto: Days after a US lawmaker compared Edward Snowden with Mahatma Gandhi, US President Barack Obama said the former CIA contractor who leaked to the world the secretive internet and phone surveillance programs, is not a patriot.

“I don’t think Snowden was a patriot,” Obama told reporters during a White House news conference.

“The fact is that Snowden’s been charged with three felonies. If in fact he believes that what he did was right, then, like every American citizen, he can come here, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case,” he said in response to a question.

“If the concern was that somehow this was the only way to get this information out to the public, I signed an executive order well before Snowden leaked this information that provided whistle-blower protection to the intelligence community for the first time,” he argued.