President Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief directly ordered the head of the Pentagon to not remove an accused war criminal from the ranks of an elite Navy SEAL team.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Monday told reporters, “I spoke with the president on Sunday,” The New York Times reports. “He gave me the order that Eddie Gallagher will retain his Trident pin.”
The Trident pin is the coveted Navy designation of being a member of a SEAL team.
Instead of Gallagher being removed the President, through his Secretary of Defense, fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer late Sunday.
In a series of tweets Trump had claimed he “was not pleased” with the way Gallagher was treated by the Navy. Five of his SEAL team mates accused him of committing war crimes, including premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice, posing for a photo with the corpse of a teenaged Islamic State captive.
Related: Retired Admiral Slams Trump for Shutting Down Navy Investigation Into Pardoned War Criminal
During Gallagher’s court martial Trump, likely fueled by Fox News reports, took to Twitter to show support for the accused war criminal. The jury convicted Gallagher of only the lesser of the charges, posing with the corpse.
Gallagher, as The New York Times reported, “was turned in by his own platoon last spring. Several fellow SEALs reported that their leader had shot civilians and killed the captive Islamic State fighter with a custom hunting knife during a deployment in Iraq in 2017. He was also charged with obstruction of justice by threatening to kill SEALs who reported him.”
Navy Secretary Spencer was reportedly threatening to resign over Trump’s unprecedented interference with discipline and chain-of-command issues, but instead Trump had him fired. The reasons Trump offered are not congruent with those Defense Secretary Esper offered. Spencer, in a letter to the President acknowledging his termination wrote: “I cannot in good conscience obey an order that I believe violates the sacred oath I took in the presence of my family, my flag and my faith to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Image: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian via Flickr