Chelsea Manning Thanks Obama

President Obama commuted Manning's 35-year prison sentence.

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning thanked President Barack Obama on Thursday for commuting the 35-year prison sentence she had received for leaking hundreds of thousands of military documents.

Thank you @BarackObama for giving me a chance. =,)

"Thank you Barack Obama for giving me a chance," Manning said in a tweet Thursday, a day after Obama defended his commutation of most of Manning’s prison sentence during his final press conference.

"Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence,” Obama said. “So the notion that the average person who was thinking about disclosing vital classified information would think it goes unpunished, I don’t think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served.”

Manning, who was arrested as Pfc. Bradley Manning, was convicted of violating the Espionage Act in 2013, after leaking more than 700,000 documents to WikiLeaks in the biggest breach of classified information of US national security history.

She was sentenced to 35 years in prison and served seven years in prison during which she announced she was a transgender woman. She will now be released on May 17, the White House announced.

Skip to footer