President Obama commutes prison sentence of Chelsea Manning

She was serving a 35-year prison sentence that would not have seen her release until 2045.

The website later disclosed thousands of sensitive messages written by USA diplomats and military records from the Iraq war, causing growing embarrassment to the U.S. government.

Deployed to Iraq in 2009, Manning was assigned to assess insurgency activity.

Manning was convicted in a military court of six violations of the Espionage Act as well as 14 others offenses.

President Barack Obama is getting Chelsea Manning sprung from a military prison about 30 years early.

Obama could be looking to solidify his legacy in the waning days of his time in the Oval Office and end up on the right side of history, a trend that’s surfaced behind a number of the President’s decisions and policies. The White House did not explain the decision.

After her sentencing, Manning announced that she was transgender and changed her name to Chelsea.

– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 17, 2017To all who campaigned for clemency on Manning’s behalf these last hard years, thank you.

Manning ended a hunger strike in September after the US Army agreed to provide her with gender confirming surgery. Court-martialed, Manning claimed she was acting under duress, suffering from mental illness.

Manning’s clemency request to Obama read, “I have served a sufficiently long sentence”.

Lawyers Nancy Hollander and Vince Ward, who represented Manning as she appealed her case, said in a statement they were delighted by the news.

The announcement prompted an immediate response from Manning’s supporters.

While I agree that there was a difference in the types of documents revealed, one might also make the argument that Snowden’s leaks revealed much more serious problems and the impact of his leaks were much more important in revealing to the American public abuses by our own government. She said she pleaded guilty without the benefit of a plea agreement because she believed the military justice system would understand her motivation for the leak and sentence her fairly.

Ward said that Manning’s sentence exceeds even global legal norms.

Former Oklahoma soldier Chelsea Manning.

Leaders with Amnesty International said that the commutation was long overdue.

Chelsea Manning will soon be free. Obama also pardoned Cartwright, who had been convicted but not yet sentenced for lying to federal investigators about his conversations with reporters about Stuxnet, the covert cyber operation aimed at Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

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