Manning’s defense team plans to ask President Barack Obama to pardon the soldier. Manning to ask for W.H. pardon

Bradley Manning’s defense team plans to ask President Barack Obama to pardon the soldier, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for giving thousands of secret government documents to WikiLeaks.

Manning’s lawyer, David Coombs, said Wednesday he would file a request early next week with the Department of the Army with the hope of making its way to the president, asking him either to pardon Manning or commute his sentence to time served.


“The time for the president to protect whistleblowers rather than punishing them is now. The time for the president to pardon Pfc. Manning is now,” Coombs said at a news conference at a hotel in Maryland not far from Fort Meade, where Manning’s court-martial took place.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a briefing Wednesday that if Manning sought a presidential pardon, his request would be considered and processed like any other application for clemency. But his chances might be slim — a report by ProPublica earlier this year found that Obama has granted clemency less often than any of his four predecessors.

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Nonetheless, Manning’s attorney said he would appeal to the White House on principle. At his news conference, Coombs read a statement from Manning that he said would accompany the pardon request, which Coombs said would restate the defense’s case that Manning acted with pure intentions.

“The decisions that I made in 2010 were made out of concern for my country and the world that we live in,” Manning’s statement said.

As Coombs read it, several Manning supporters stood behind him wearing black T-shirts that read “President Obama: Pardon Bradley.”

Advocacy groups, including Amnesty International, also called on the White House to pardon Manning.

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“Bradley Manning should be shown clemency in recognition of his motives for acting as he did, the treatment he endured in his early pretrial detention, and the due process shortcomings during his trial,” said Amnesty International’s senior international law director, Widney Brown.

Army judge Col. Denise Lind sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison, demoted him to private and ordered him dishonorably discharged from the Army. She said Manning would be credited with 1,294 days — over three years — based on the time he has served in military custody since his arrest in 2010.

Under this sentencing, Manning will be eligible to go before a clemency board in three years and will be up for review for parole in seven years, Coombs said.

Manning’s detention, trial and now sentencing will send a chill through those thinking about revealing wrongdoing in the future, Coombs said: “This was designed to send a message.”

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Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden was not in the courtroom or at the news conference today in Maryland, but his presence still loomed large. So Coombs had a message for Snowden: The current environment is not friendly to whistleblowers.

Prosecutors argued throughout the trial that Manning was not a whistleblower but a traitor who knowingly aided the enemy — in this case, Al Qaeda.

In July, the judge acquitted Manning of this most serious charge.

Manning had faced a potential of 90 years in prison and the prosecution had asked for at least 60.

Coombs said he had discussed a plea agreement with the prosecution before the trial began. The military offered a sentence longer than 35 years in exchange for Manning cooperating and testifying. Coombs rejected that proposal.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon called Manning’s sentence “light.”

“Given the vast damage he did to our national security and the need to send a strong signal to others who may be tempted to disclose classified information, this is a dangerous conclusion,” McKeon said.

Manning’s defense team drew the opposite conclusion: Fewer people will feel comfortable sharing information with the press and WikiLeaks, which Coombs described as a journalistic organization.

For Manning’s supporters, Manning’s trial and the sentence delivered today represent a major setback for government transparency.

“The cancer of over-classification is threatening the very fabric of our free society. Over-classification hinders debate. It hinders what we know about the government,” Coombs said.

Even the trial itself was over-classified, he argued.

“You would be underwhelmed” if the public could see the redacted sections from the trial’s transcripts, Coombs said.

When the court went into closed session due to the sensitivity of what was being discussed, Coombs said he often left at the end of the day thinking, “I don’t know why we were in closed session. There was nothing that, in my mind, warranted closing the session.”

Coombs also said the lack of cameras in the courtroom hindered transparency and kept the public and the media from becoming invested in the trial’s outcome.