Obama commutes majority of Chelsea Manning's sentence

President Barack Obama commuted the vast majority of Chelsea Manning's sentence on Tuesday, shrinking her time behind bars from another 28 years down to four more months.

After spending around seven years in prison, she is now set to be released on May 17, 2017.

Manning was convicted of leaking a huge amount of United States military and foreign policy material in 2010. The information was provided to then little-known WikiLeaks, launching the organization into international renown.

Edward Snowden, whose intelligence leaks catapulted to international fame similar to Manning's in 2013, has publicly called for her sentence to be commuted.

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Manning's attorney was reportedly astounded.

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Manning, a transgender woman, is imprisoned at a male prison in Kansas and has attempted suicide there on two occasions. She was forced into solitary confinement after her first suicide attempt in July of 2016, despite a years-long history of mental and emotional deterioration. Manning joined the military in large part as a means to pay for college, but was trying to handle her gender dysphoria at a time when coming out as transgender would have given the military grounds to revoke the promise of college tuition in exchange for service.

Had her sentence not been commuted, she was scheduled to be behind bars until 2045.

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Snowden and Manning have been linked over the past week, as advocates for both have implored Obama to pardon them for leaking information to the public. But in pardoning Manning, the White House made sure to point out that government officials don't believe Manning and Snowden are equatable.

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"Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing," White House spokesperson Josh Earnest said, according to The New York Times. “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”

Manning was a U.S. intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009, at which point she was known as Bradley Manning. This position gave her access to information about the war there and in Afghanistan that was not available to the public. She took information regarding underreported civilian death tolls, detainee abuse, and prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay, and, through WikiLeaks in conjunction with mainstream news organizations, provided that information to the world.

"I want people to see the truth...regardless of who they are...because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public," Manning wrote at the time.

Earnest, despite the commutation announcement, did say that Manning's leaks were "damaging to national security." The Obama administration hustled to secure the safety of newly-named informers in the aftermath of the leaks, but no one has shown that people lost their lives as a result of her disclosures.