'Justice has been served,' Obama says of Chelsea Manning clemency
WASHINGTON — President Obama defended his decision to release Army Private Chelsea Manning from prison early, telling reporters at his last press conference as president Wednesday that "I feel very comfortable that justice has been served."
Obama said the commutation of Manning balanced national security interests with Manning's remorse and her long sentence.
"First of all, let's be clear, Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence," he said. "Given she went to trial and due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that the sentence that she received was very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received — and that she had served a significant amount of time — it made sense to commute a part of her sentence."
Manning was convicted in 2013 of passing a trove of military and diplomatic cables to the web site WikiLeaks in what was then the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history. But Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning before changing her gender identity in prison, has also attracted support of transgender activists and human rights groups because of her treatment in prison, which resulted in two suicide attempts.
Obama said he did not consider Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's offer to give up the diplomatic protection of the Ecuadorian embassy in London in exchange for Manning's release. "I don’t pay a lot of attention to Mr. Assange's tweets, so that wasn’t a consideration in this instance."
Assange has been holed up in the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden for rape charges and the United States for espionage. But on Wednesday, Wikileaks seemed to hedge his offer to give himself up. "Assange is still happy to come to the U.S. provided all his rights are guaranteed despite White House now saying Manning was not quid-quo-pro," the organization tweeted.
Obama encouraged future would-be leakers to avail themselves of existing whistleblower protection laws, though he acknowledged that many feel those laws are inadequate. He said leaks could mean life or death for U.S. soldiers, spies and diplomats in the field.
The decision to free the Army private less than seven years into her 35-year sentence for espionage and other crimes came in the final 72 hours of his presidency, amid a flurry of 273 clemency actions for celebrity tax evaders, Puerto Rican terrorists, drug dealers, and the former No. 2. general in the U.S. military. None were more controversial than Manning, who congressional Republicans called a "traitor" who put the lives of American troops and diplomats in peril.
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Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning in last-minute clemency push
Sean Spicer, the press secretary for President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday that Obama's defense of Manning's leak to WikiLeaks was ironic given the current president's outrage over similar disclosures of emails belonging to aides to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Committee staffers.
Manning's commutation is "disappointing and it sends a very troubling message," Spicer said.
Obama's press secretary, Josh Earnest, hit back at Republican critics on the same point.
"Those are the same Republicans on Capitol Hill who endorsed a man for president who praised WikiLeaks, defended the integrity of Julian Assange even as he was trashing the patriotic men and women who work in the United States intelligence community," he said. "I'm tempted to say this is an astonishing display of intellectual dishonesty by congressional Republicans, but it’s honestly par for the course for them."
