President Obama was questioned by supporters of accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning last week at a fundraiser in San Francisco. Obama briefly discussed the issue after his event was disrupted by protesters criticizing the government’s harsh treatment of Manning. The President’s comments were recorded on a cell phone.

President Barack Obama: “We’re a nation of laws. We don’t individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate. No, he’s doing fine, he’s doing fine; I mean, he’s being courteous, and he’s asking a question. He broke the law.”

Logan Price: “You can make it harder to break the law, even to tell the truth.”

Obama: “Well, what he did was he dumped” —

Price: “Isn’t that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?”

Obama: “No, it wasn’t the same thing. What it was, Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way.”

President Obama openly declared that Manning—who has yet to stand trial—has broken the law. Obama also responded to a question comparing Manning to Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers, detailing the secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. According to President Obama, the cases are not similar because, “Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified the same way.” In fact, the material disclosed in the Pentagon Papers was designated Top Secret—the highest secrecy designation under law—whereas the material allegedly leaked by Manning to WikiLeaks was marked “secret” or “classified,” among the lowest-level secrecy designations.