(CNN) Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday celebrated the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, arguing it's "great for the American people."

"We're going to extradite him. It will be really good to get him back on United States soil. So now he's our property and we can get the facts and truth from him," the West Virginia Democrat told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."

Manchin, along with nine of his Democratic colleagues, had signed a letter to Vice President Mike Pence last June, expressing concern about Ecuador providing asylum to Assange since 2012.

"I think its very good for us to finally get him on US soil so we can investigate, we can basically cross-examine, we can find out the facts that only he knows and his connections and how he basically distributed his information," Manchin told CNN on Thursday.

Assange was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Ecuador withdrew his asylum. Assange was charged with conspiracy for allegedly helping former Army intelligence specialist Chelsea Manning to access Defense Department computers in 2010 in an effort to disclose secret government documents. He and WikiLeaks also played a role in separate allegations that Russian military intelligence hackers illegally accessed Democratic Party servers during the 2016 election, but wasn't charged with any related crimes.

Read More