Chelsea E. Manning the transgender former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was convicted for giving more than 700,000 classified military documents to WikiLeaks, is officially planning to run for a U.S. Senate seat.
Manning, who revealed she was transgender during her trial, was initially denied medical treatment in her all-male prison to facilitate her transition. Following multiple suicide attempts, she was ultimately permitted to undergo gender confirmation surgery, making her the first U.S. prison inmate to have access to the procedure.
Manning was sentenced to 35 years at Fort Leavenworth, but after President Barack Obama approved Manning’s petition to commute her prison sentence to time served, she was released on May 17, 2017, having served seven years. Since her release, Manning has written about free speech, civil liberties, queer and transgender rights and computer security for publications like The Guardian.
At the time of her trial, Manning very courageously wrote “I take full and complete responsibility for my decision to disclose these materials to the public. I have never made any excuses for what I did. I pleaded guilty without the protection of a plea agreement because I believed the military justice system would understand my motivation for the disclosure and sentence me fairly. I was wrong.”
