WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Chelsea Manning, the transgender former US Marine who was jailed for leaking classified documents, is trying to become Democratic Party candidate in her home state of Maryland for the year-end election to the US Senate.
The former intelligence analyst is an outspoken activist on intelligence and transgender-rights issues and writes for publications like The Guardian.
Manning will challenge the incumbent Senator Ben Cardin in the primary. Cardin, the 74-year old ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is currently serving his second term.
Officially launching her campaign on Sunday, Manning said 'We need to stop expecting that our systems will somehow fix themselves. We need to actually take the reins of power from them.'
Chelsea E. Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was a Washington D.C. based network security expert who served as an intelligence analyst for U.S. Army.
Manning was arrested in Iraq in 2010 for leaking hundreds of thousands of confidential military and State Department documents and releasing them through anti-secrecy website Wikileaks. Following a court-martial, she was convicted in 2013 for 17 serious crimes, including six counts of espionage.
President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence, citing it as 'disproportionate' to the penalties faced by other whistleblowers. She served seven years in prison and was released in May 2017.
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