U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning has filed paperwork to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland, where she may challenge Democratic incumbent Ben Cardin in a primary.
The documents showing Manning’s campaign filing were shared on Twitter today, and confirmed by the Washington Post.
Https://twitter.com/DavidPontious/status/952208687204065282
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Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, was convicted in 2013 of leaking a vast trove of Army documents, videos, and other materials to WikiLeaks. They included evidence of what Manning later described as “missteps” and “misguided policies” in the prosecution of the war in Iraq. That included a video now known as Collateral Murder, which showed the killing by U.S. Forces of a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters employees whose cameras were misidentified as weapons.
Manning was pardoned by President Barack Obama in 2017, days before he left office. Manning was born male, and was known as Bradley Manning before changing her name to Chelsea and suing for sex reassignment surgery and hormone treatments while in prison.
While in prison and since her release, Manning has remained a highly visible political voice, with growing support from leftists within and outside the Democratic party. She wrote in the New York Times in 2013 about the dangers of government secrecy. In July, she protested Donald Trump’s declared ban on transgendered people in military service. She has also expressed sympathy for the Black Lives Matter movement against police violence, advocated for criminal justice reform, and criticized the “#resistance” backed by centrist Democrats.