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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2020/02/19/chelsea-manning-free-prison-grumbles-motion/">https://theintercept.com/2020/02/19/chelsea-manning-free-prison-grumbles-motion/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Law Says Chelsea Manning Must Be
Freed From Prison</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Natasha Lennard - February
19, 2020</div>
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<p><img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/02/GettyImages-1149597952-1582138248.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=719"
alt="ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA - MAY 16: Former U.S.
Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning arrives
at the Albert Bryan U.S federal courthouse May 16,
2019 in Alexandria, Virginia. Manning, who
previously served four years in prison for
providing classified information to Wikileaks,
could face additional jail time for refusing to
cooperate in an additional grand jury
investigation. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty
Images)" moz-do-not-send="true" width="1024"
height="719"></p>
<p class="caption">Former U.S. Army intelligence
analyst Chelsea Manning arrives at the Albert Bryan
U.S Courthouse on May 16, 2019, in Alexandria, Va.</p>
<p class="caption">
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images</p>
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<div data-reactid="200"><u>To observe Chelsea</u>
<p> Manning’s actions over the last months is to know
that she will not be coerced. She could have avoided
her current incarceration at Alexandria Detention
Center in Virginia, where she has been held for nearly
a year. She could have freed herself at any point. She
could have avoided accruing fines of $230,000 and
counting. She could still avoid further days in jail
and further crippling debts to the government. All she
would have to do — all she ever had to do — is testify
in front of the federal grand jury currently
investigating WikiLeaks.</p>
<p>What has long been clear — no amount of jail time
will coerce Manning into speaking — is now, surely,
undeniable. The sole purpose of Manning’s detention
has been to coerce her to testify, and it has failed.</p>
<p>On Wednesday, Manning’s legal team filed<a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6780692-Motion-to-Release-Chelsea-Manning.html">
what’s known as a Grumbles motion</a> in court,
asserting that Manning has proven herself incoercible
and so must, according to legal statute, be released
from her incarceration.</p>
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<p>“Should Judge Trenga agree that Chelsea will never
agree to testify, he will be compelled by the law to
order her release.”</p>
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<p>It is a grim peculiarity of American law that a
person who refuses to cooperate with a grand jury
subpoena may be held in contempt of court and fined or
imprisoned with the express purpose of coercing
testimony, but when the coercive condition is absent,
such incarceration becomes illegal. Wednesday’s motion
directs Judge Anthony Trenga, who is presiding over
the grand jury and Manning’s imprisonment, to
accordingly recognize the illegality in this case.</p>
<p>“The key issue before Judge Trenga is whether
continued incarceration could persuade Chelsea to
testify,” said Manning’s attorney, Moira
Meltzer-Cohen, on filing the Grumbles motion. “Judges
have complained of the ‘perversity’ of this law: that
a witness may win their freedom by persisting in their
contempt of court. However, should Judge Trenga agree
that Chelsea will never agree to testify, he will be
compelled by the law to order her release.”</p>
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<p>If the motion is successful, Manning will be freed
for the very reason she has been caged: her silence.
The judge can decide to recognize that Manning won’t
speak as a consequence of more time in jail — or
because she will continue to face unprecedented
$1,000-per-day fines. Any other conclusion, after her
months of steadfast and principled grand jury
resistance, would fly in the face of all reason. The
whistleblower’s actions and words make it plain.</p>
<p>“I have been separated from my loved ones, deprived
of sunlight, and could not even attend my mother’s
funeral,” Manning said in a statement Wednesday. “It
is easier to endure these hardships now than to
cooperate to win back some comfort, and live the rest
of my life knowing that I acted out of self-interest
and not principle.”</p>
<p><u>Federal grand juries</u> have <a
href="https://peopleslawoffice.com/improper-use-of-federal-grand-jury-michael-deutsch-political-repression/">long</a>
been used to investigate and intimidate activist
communities — from the late 19th century labor
movements, to the Puerto Rican Independence Movement
and black liberationists of the last century, to the
more recent persecutions of environmentalists,
anarchists, and Indigenous rights fighters. Manning
has consistently shown her refusal to cooperate with
any such process, and again asserted in her latest
statement that grand juries are “used by federal
prosecutors to harass and disrupt political opponents
and activists through secrecy, coercion, and jailing
without trial.”</p>
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<p><u>The Grumbles motion</u> filed on Wednesday
contains a letter from the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer, written late last
year accusing the United States of submitting Manning
to treatment that is tantamount to torture. As I <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2020/01/02/chelsea-manning-torture-prison-united-nations/">wrote</a> after the
letter was first released, Melzer not only criticized
the torturous practice of coercive imprisonment and
harsh fines, but noted that Manning’s “categorical and
persistent refusal to give testimony demonstrates the
lack of their coercive effect.”</p>
<p>The motion also includes a personality assessment
carried out by Dr. Sara Boyd, a clinical and forensic
psychologist from the University of Virginia, which
suggests that Manning is constitutionally incapable of
acting against her conscience. “Manning exhibits long
standing personality features that relate to her
scrupulousness, her persistence and dedication, and
her willingness to endure social disapproval as well
as formal punishments,” Boyd wrote.</p>
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<p>Manning’s consistent behavior in the face of immense
hardship and financial ruin should be wholly
sufficient evidence that she will not be coerced; the
personality assessment and the letter from the U.N.
rapporteur no more than state the obvious. Were the
judge to decide to continue imprisoning Manning, which
he has the discretion to do, he would do so in the
face of overwhelming evidence.</p>
<p>Meltzer-Cohen, Manning’s attorney, has in the past <a
href="https://www.salon.com/2014/02/03/the_strange_success_of_grand_jury_resistance/">successfully</a>
seen a grand jury resister released as a consequence
of her filing a Grumbles motion. In 2014, her former
client, a New York-based anarchist, was released after
spending 241 days in a federal prison for refusing to
testify. Meltzer-Cohen filed a motion arguing that
since the young man had made amply evident that he
would never cooperate, the coercive premise of his
imprisonment was proven invalid.</p>
<p>That motion was aided by letters from friends and
acquaintances, as well as a Change.org petition —
arguably less august testimony than that which
accompanies Manning’s motion. But the judge in that
case ruled, begrudgingly, that the evidence compelled
him to release the prisoner. “The refusal to testify
is somehow transmogrified from a lock to a key,” the
judge wrote in his decision. At the time,
Meltzer-Cohen told me that the case illustrated the
power of grand jury resistance; that people “have been
capable of standing strong in the face of serious
consequences” and that resisters “can survive and even
prevail.”</p>
<p>It is a perverse juridical logic that finds potential
justice in brutally coercing a witness to testify
before a secretive hearing, ripe for governmental
abuse. But even the nefarious law, if followed to the
letter, demands that Manning be immediately freed.</p>
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