Edward Snowden has brought in a healthy $1.25m in speaking fees ever since he jumped on a plane to Hong Kong with a treasure trove of NSA secrets, a new court filing [PDF] has revealed.

The whistleblower, who exposed mass surveillance of American citizens and foreigners by the US government by handing over top-secret documents to journalists before escaping to Moscow, earns an average of $18,745 per engagement. And Uncle Sam wants it – all of it.

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a “public service” by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents.
“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made,”

“Now I would say that doing what he did — and the way he did it — was inappropriate and illegal,” Holder added.

Holder said Snowden jeopardized America’s security interests by leaking classified information while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency in 2013.

“He harmed American interests,”

Snowden, who has spent the last few years in exile in Russia, should return to the U.S. to deal with the consequences, Holder noted.

“I think that he’s got to make a decision. He’s broken the law in my view.”

“But,” Holder emphasized, “I think in deciding what an appropriate sentence should be, I think a judge could take into account the usefulness of having had that national debate.”