Is a meme correct that Chelsea Manning was "in jail" as of March 2022? No, that's not true: Manning was released from jail in 2020 and is free as of this writing. Manning's recent tweets from her verified Twitter account, as well as news reports about her, confirm that she is no longer incarcerated.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) on March 16, 2022. Beside a meme that featured individual photos of Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange, Manning, and Edward Snowden, the caption opened:
#ukraine #russia #war #snowden #assange#wikileaks #usa #warcrimes
The text below the images of Cheney, Bush and Clinton read:
FREE
The text below the images of "Assange, Manning, and Snowden" read:
IN JAIL
IN JAIL
IN EXILE
Below the images, the bottom of the meme reads:
YOU KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG WHEN...
THE CRIMINALS ARE FREE AND THE PEOPLE WHO EXPOSED THEIR CRIMES ARE IN JAIL OR HAVE TO FLEE
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue. Mar 22 18:54:27 2022 UTC)
While the meme in its totality appears to be a social commentary, this fact check will focus only on the declaration that Chelsea Manning was in jail at the time the meme was posted.
Manning was released from jail on March 12, 2020, after she had been detained for 11 months for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Wikileaks founder Assange. According to The Washington Post, a federal judge announced that the grand jury had been disbanded and therefore Manning's detention "no longer serves any coercive purpose."
A March 7, 2022 tweet from the verified Twitter account of Chelsea Manning has also confirmed that she is not only out of jail, but will be publishing a book soon as well.
A general Google search for Chelsea Manning found a March 11, 2022, Forbes article which suggests that Manning is currently dating Grimes, a high profile Canadian musician (Claire Elise Boucher) who bore a child with Elon Musk.
