President Donald Trump said that he is "looking at" the case of the former Groton sailor imprisoned for taking photos on a nuclear attack submarine.

During a roughly hourlong interview that aired on Fox News on Thursday night, Sean Hannity asked Trump if he'd consider pardoning Kristian Saucier, who was convicted of one count of unauthorized retention of national defense information, a felony.

"We're looking at a few of them. And by the way, if another event didn't happen, I would look at him. How can you have somebody else get away with such a tremendous amount and then this person who takes a picture of his desk on an old submarine— look, if China or Russia wanted information on that submarine, they've had it for many years. That I can tell you," Trump said.

A machinist's mate aboard the USS Alexandria from September 2007 to March 2012, Saucier, 30, used his cellphone camera to take pictures of various technical components of the submarine's nuclear propulsion system while it was docked at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton.

Jeffrey Addicott, a former Army attorney and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's School of Law in Texas, submitted petitions on Jan. 9 for a presidential pardon and for clemency on behalf of Saucier.

Saucier's mother, Kathleen, who has appeared on Hannity's show, said Friday that she was "very grateful they are reviewing it."

She told The Day in September that her son took the photos as a keepsake of his time in the Navy, and that he never intended to distribute or sell them, as the government speculated. She described her son as being in the top 10 percent of his class at his Florida high school, and said that he could have had his choice of colleges, but chose to serve his country instead.

The Navy and the government have characterized Saucier's actions as far more serious than what Trump described Thursday night.

Rear Adm. Charles Richard, former director of undersea warfare, in submitting a victim impact statement on behalf of the Navy in the case, said that Saucier's actions "have had far-reaching consequences for the United States and the Officers, Sailors and families who serve it."

During Saucier's sentencing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Vanessa Richards, a prosecutor for the case, said the photographs documented the submarine's entire propulsion system. "The technology that's documented in these photographs is, quite literally, an engineering and a scientific wonder," she said.

The government sought 63 months' prison time in the case.

j.bergman@theday.com