President Obama on Wednesday defended commuting Chelsea Manning’s 35-year prison sentence — saying the seven years the Army private will have spent behind bars would deter others from leaking government secrets.
“Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence,” Obama said from the White House during his final press conference. “The notion that the average person who was thinking about disclosing vital classified information would think that it goes unpunished, I don’t think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served.”
Obama said that he granted clemency to Manning on Tuesday because she had gone to trial, taken responsibility for her crime and received a sentence that was harsher than other leakers had received.
The former Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst who served in Iraq, has begun the transition to a woman while at the men’s prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
She had twice tried to commit suicide while imprisoned for leaking 750,000 pages of documents on WikiLeaks.
President-elect Donald Trump’s team had a far different take on Manning’s release, which is scheduled for May 17.
“It’s disappointing, and it sends a very troubling message when it comes to the handling of classified information and to the consequences of those who leak information that threatens the security of our nation,” said Trump spokesman Sean Spicer.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence denounced Manning for selling out the United States, and said Obama’s action was a terrible mistake.
“Private Manning is a traitor and should not have been turned into a martyr. Private Manning’s actions compromised our national security, endangered American personnel down range [and] compromised individuals in Afghanistan who were cooperating with our forces,” Pence said in an interview with Fox News.
Meanwhile, one of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s lawyers said Obama’s move doesn’t meet the conditions of Assange’s ffer to return to the US to face espionage charges.
“This is well short of what he sought,” Barry Pollack said in an e-mail to The Post.
“Mr. Assange had called for Chelsea Manning to receive clemency and be released immediately. He does not think she should have been prosecuted in the first place.”
In a tweet last week, WikiLeaks said Assange would agree to extradition proceedings if Manning were shown mercy.
Pollack’s stand differs from that of another Assange lawyer, Melinda Taylor, who told The Associated Press Assange he would keep his word and face justice in the US.
“Everything that he has said he’s standing by,” she said.
Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition.
With AP