President Barack Obama has commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army private accused of leaking classified military secrets to WikiLeaks. Washington bureau reporter Geoff Bennett filed the following report.
In five months, former Army Private Chelsea Manning will walk free.
Manning is the transgender soldier imprisoned for leaking more than 700,000 classified military and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks.
Manning was arrested in 2010 and has been in custody ever since. She was serving a 35-year sentence until President Barack Obama commuted, or shortened, it Tuesday.
The move is viewed by some in the military community as slap in the face and a win for Wikileaks.
Manning's lawyers say she twice tried to commit suicide last year.
A senior White House official tells us the president believes Manning accepted responsibility and expressed remorse. Her clemency announcement came in an announced group of 64 pardons and 208 other commutations, Tuesday.
But the White House is essentially ruling out a pardon for Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking details of secret surveillance programs.
"The crimes that he's accused of committing are serious, and we believe that he should return to the United States and face them, rather than seeking refuge in the arms of an adversary of the United States that has their own strategic interest in disseminating harmful, or disseminating information in a harmful way," said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Manning's reduced sentence is part of Obama's hallmark criminal justice reform efforts.
Obama has reduced more sentences than all the previous presidents combined, mostly for low-level drug offenders.
His controversial decision to dole out forgiveness to Chelsea Manning is now part of that legacy, too.