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Them onto a personal computer data device. this is something that is against the law. the military already long before taking a very hard stand on it. and back when this all happened, top pentagon leaders were absolutely furious about it and wanted to send a very strong message that stealing information and then leaking it would not be tolerated. and, of course, it really did put wikileaks on the map and now this action by president obama comes against the backdrop of wikileaks potential involvement in the russian hacking scandal, potential involvement. we grant you that. so, this is going to be looked at in a very difficult fashion, i think, by u.s. military leaders. there is an understanding of what chelsea manning personally is going through in prison. everybody gets that. but in the meantime, the view from the pentagon is this person stole some 400,000 defense department documents, hundreds ....
Way to get out of a male prison, as you know. and, so, from the view of human rights, this was a simple case. in the national security arena, it was not so simple, especially in light of the 2016 election, wolf, and the decision that or the signal that this would send, they view, to other leak cases in the future. evan perez with the latest on that. evan, stand by. the manning and cartwright cases had significant impact on the united states military. i want to go to our pentagon correspondent barbara starr. so, how is this news about chelsea manning s commutation being received where you are over at the pentagon? well, i think it s fair to say, wolf, with a very raised eyebrow. the u.s. military firmly believes that chelsea manning, as a low-level junior army soldier, mind you, stole illegally hundreds of thousands of documents, downloading them off a classified system, putting ....
well, i don t know why he did it and so i ll look forward to hearing his reasoning because i just heard about it. but the reality is i have serious concerns about equivocating sentences when national security is at stake. what happened here is that literally hundreds of thousands of documents were released. it put national security at risk. it put individual operatives at risk. it put our national interests at risk with other countries. and at a time that we are seriously questioning what russia did as it relates to our recent elections and the role that wikileaks and the different iteration has played in that regard, i m not sure what type of message we send here. and, so, i m really surprised that the president took this action and i have concerns about what message we send about ultimately revealing a sensitive national security documents. so, you have serious questions about why the president did this. you d like to hear more of an ....
The reason he has given repeatedly, he feared if i go there to face these allegations, that s really a an attempt for the u.s. to then extradite me from there back to the u.s. for releasing these documents. but five days ago he said, listen, you grant clemency, i will come to the u.s. i will face extradition and, of course, face charges for his involvement in this. the question now is does julian assange keep that promise? of course there s no connection we re not trying to make any connection between that assange demand and the fact the obama administration decided to do this, but the fact is they have done it. five days ago julian assange promised to come here to the u.s. we ll see if he follows through on that promise. and imagine if he does, you will have, i don t know if you want to call it the trial of a century, but you will have quite a legal proceeding here with julian assange, particularly as barbara mentioned, wikileaks involvement in russian hacking and the u.s. electi ....
Then released via wikileaks. so, if they follow through on this promise would be an enormous event. wikileaks tweet victory, obama commutes chelsea manning sentence from 35 years to seven, release date now may 17. we have edward snowden, of course, who has his own exile, as it were, in russia for his involvement in releasing documents. he s saying as well in five more months he will be free, addressing this to chelsea manning much course. thank you for what you did for everyone, chelsea. stay strong awhile longer says edward snowden. we re going to get more reaction right now. democratic senator robert menendez of new jersey, key member of the foreign relation iz committee. senator, thanks very much for joining us. good to be with you, wolf. all right. so, president obama just commuted chelsea manning s sentence, we pointed out she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, three or four years ago. respond to this. why do you think he did it? did he do the right thing? ....