Chelsea Manning: Enough is Enough

Chelsea Manning committed a crime. She served her sentence, which was commuted by President Barack Obama. She’s in jail again. Since May 2019. She attempted suicide on Wednesday. This needs to end. The USG should let her go and let her get on with her life.

Why is she in jail again? Here’s an explanation from CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi.

She was jailed for nearly two months for refusing to testify before another grand jury in March 2019. During her detainment, she was issued a second subpoena to appear before the grand jury. She was released from federal custody for about a week, before she was once again found in contempt by a federal judge and ordered to return to jail.

She is also being fined $1,000 a day, which, according to her lawyers, has reached nearly half a million dollars. 

Manning “remains unwavering in her refusal to participate in a secret grand jury process that she sees as highly susceptible to abuse,” her legal team said Wednesday.

It’s 2020. I’m not sure what a grand jury thinks it needs to uncover about an incident in 2010 that the USG already investigated and prosecuted. According to an article in the Jacobin*, it’s related to Julian Assange. It seems like a cruel application of the power of the state.

* (I don’t know anything about Jacobin. The article is sympathetic to Manning’s actions. I disagree strongly with how she released the information. At the same time, anyone who has read the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers will likely understand how someone would conclude that the American public was not being told the truth about the war in Afghanistan. I’m still amazed that people haven’t read the Afghanistan Papers.)