Navy SEALs described their colleague Edward Gallagher, whose war crimes were pardoned by President Donald Trump, as “freaking evil.”
The New York Times obtained video interviews and private group text messages that show their concern over Gallagher’s bloodlust.
“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator First Class Craig Miller told investigators.
At one point Miller, like some of the other battle-hardened SEALs who broke the code of silence to report Gallagher, began weeping.
“Sorry about this,” Miller said. “It’s the first time — I’m really broken up about this.”
“The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview.
“You could tell he was perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told investigators.
Gallagher was accused of war crimes, including murder, but acquitted by a military jury in July on all but a single relatively minor charge, and was then cleared of all punishment last month by the president, who then invited him over the Christmas break to his Mar-A-Lago resort.