Obama defends commuting Manning sentence: 'Justice has been served'

President Barack Obama defended his decision to commute the sentence of convicted intelligence leaker Chelsea Manning. He told reporters at his final press conference Wednesday that "justice has been served."

"I feel very comfortable that justice has been served.

"Let’s be clear Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence. The notion that the average person who is thinking about exposing vital classified information will think that it goes unpunished; I don’t think would get that impression from the sentence that Chelsea Manning has served.

“It has been my view that given she went to trial, that due process was carried out, that she took responsibility for her crime, that the sentence that she received was very disproportionate relative to what other leakers had received, and that she had served a significant amount of time, that it made sense to commute and not pardon her sentence,” Obama said.