Obama's priorities: Embarrassing Obama a graver sin than leaking classified documents in wartime
Obama commuted the remaining 28-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the Army intelligence soldier convicted of violating the Espionage Act in 2010 by leaking State Department cables and military information to WikiLeaks. This means Manning, a traitor, served just seven years of a 35-year prison term.
The commutation shows that Obama considers leaking confidential military information and documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and diplomatic classified information not as serious as leaking emails that document the truth that Hillary lied, that Obama lied, and that Hillary sold access to the State Department. Obama is more upset that Russians may have leaked emails about Hillary than he is that Manning leaked classified military and diplomatic documents during a time of war.
The commutation comes in the middle of the campaign by Obama and the MSM about the threat to our election system supposedly caused by the supposed Russian hacking of John Podesta's and the DNC's emails that were leaked to WikiLeaks. Obama expelled 30 Russian diplomats, called for sanctions, and demanded congressional hearings, aided by the ever compliant John McCain.
Obama has our intelligence agencies investigating the Russian "interference."
Obama has his CIA chief, Brennan, lecture Trump about the "Russian threat."
This narrative of Russian "interference" is important to Obama because Hillary lost, which is the loss of his third term and rejection of his agenda, despite the furious campaigning by Obama, Michelle, and Joe Biden for Hillary. Obama has to explain the loss and wants to cast doubt on Trump's win and weaken Trump's presidency.
In 2010, Robert Gibbs, Obama's press secretary, presumably speaking for Obama, described the effects of Manning's release of over 250,000 State Department cables:
[T]hese cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world.
In 2010, even then-senator John Kerry called Manning's crime "a reckless action which jeopardizes lives by exposing raw, contemporaneous intelligence."
It seems that Gibbs's statement in 2010 was just political blather because Obama had to run again in 2012. Now that Hillary lost and Obama's term ends in two days, thank God, Obama shows by deeds his true beliefs. He does not care about national security; he cares only about winning elections.