Charlie Savage reports at the New York Times that whistleblower Chelsea Manning is among the 209 people to whom President Barack Obama on Tuesday granted commutations that shorten their prison sentences. Obama also on Tuesday granted pardons to 64 people. Savage writes that Manning is scheduled to be freed on May 17.
In 2013, Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, after a military court trial centered on Manning’s leaking of United States government information to WikiLeaks.
Last week, former US House of Representatives members and presidential candidates Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to Obama presenting their arguments for commuting Manning’s sentence. Paul and Kucinich, who is a Ron Paul Institute Advisory Board member, are among the many people to request that Obama, in his final days as president, grant a commutation to Manning.
