In a subtle yet remarkable shift in tone, former Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that the “possibility exists” that the Justice Department could forge a deal with fugitive leaker Edward Snowden that could bring him home.

Speaking to Yahoo News, Holder said “we are in a different place as a result of the Snowden disclosures,” adding that Snowden’s revelations about the size and scope of the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs “spurred a necessary debate.”

 “I certainly think there could be a basis for a resolution that everybody could ultimately be satisfied with. I think the possibility exists,” Holder said.

Holder, who just returned to the private sector as a lawyer for the firm Covington & Burling after spending six years at the helm of President Obama’s Justice Department, has suggested before that a deal could take place that would allow Snowden to return to the U.S. from Moscow, where he is living under asylum. But Holder’s previous comments, in January 2014, made clear that “the notion of clemency was not something we were willing to consider.”

Read the article “Eric Holder: Edward Snowden Could Come Home” on nationaljournal.com.