Sen. Tom Cotton Tuesday slammed President Barack Obama's commuting of Chelsea Manning's 35-year prison term, saying that his leaking classified information to WikiLeaks in 2009 provided "grave harm to our national security."
"I am very surprised," the Arkansas Republican, an Army veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, told Jake Tapper on CNN. "Chelsea Manning pleaded guilty to very serious crimes leaking highly classified information that put at risk the lives of our troops and our diplomats, our intelligence officers — allies who helped us around the world.
"This was grave harm to our national security," he added. "Chelsea Manning is serving a sentence and should continue to serve that sentence."
In one of his final acts, President Obama's move allowed Manning — who committed the leaks as Bradley Manning — to go free nearly three decades early. She will leave prison in May.
Manning was an Army intelligence analyst and was convicted in military court in 2013 of six violations of the Espionage Act and 14 other offenses for leaking more than 700,000 documents and some battlefield video to WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, serving nearly seven years before Obama's action on Tuesday.
In November, Manning asked the president to commute her sentence to time served.
Immediately after the president's decision was announced, Cotton — who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee — said that "we ought not treat a traitor like a martyr."
"There will be time to review her sentence and seek a parole in the future," the first-term senator told Tapper. "But for the president, especially a president who has made so much recently about the danger that WikiLeaks has posed our national security, to commute Manning's sentence I think is disappointing.
"I wish Barack Obama would have allowed the military justice system to proceed in due course rather than short-circuiting the sentence 28 years before it was set to expire."
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