Article by the staff of "The Navy Times":
President Donald J. Trump has decided to restore convicted SEAL Edward
Gallagher’s pay grade to chief petty officer, overriding a decision last
week by the Navy’s top admiral, both Navy Times and Fox News learned.
Although naval officials and Navy Times discussed Trump’s looming decision on Sunday, it was announced on the morning Fox and Friends show by network contributor Pete Hegseth, who said he spoke directly with the president about intervening in three war crimes cases.
A week before Veterans Day, Trump’s move clears the way to free Army
1st Lt. Clint Lorance, who was convicted on a pair of murder charges for
ordering his platoon to shoot and kill three Afghan men on a motorcycle
in 2012 and is serving a 19-year sentence at the U.S. Disciplinary
Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
It also is poised to end the prosecution of Green Beret Maj. Matthew Golsteyn, who is accused of executing a suspected Taliban bomb maker in Helmand Province nine years ago.
“This president recognizes the injustice of it,” Hegseth said during
the broadcast. “You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy. Then
they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn’t like, and then we put
them in jail or we throw the book at them.”On Tuesday, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday decided to
retain the spirit of a military jury’s recommended sentence for
Gallagher, 40, letting stand the panel’s call to demote him but keeping
him a petty officer first class and not the E-1 pay grade where Navy
regulations would’ve automatically left him after more than two decades
of service.
Gallagher was convicted on the sole charge of posing for a snapshot
with a dead detainee. A dozen service members, including a commissioned
officer senior to Gallagher, were not indicted or apparently punished
for a crime resolved in the past through mild administrative actions.
And it remained unclear if Naval Special Warfare truly had finished with Gallagher, at least administratively.
Navy Times had been tracking the fate of the highly decorated SEAL on
Friday, after he’d been ordered to report to duty at Naval Base
Coronado.
Rumors swirled throughout the base that senior officers were poised to
unleash a series of sanctions on him, including sending him to a Trident
Review Board to strip him of the SEAL insignia, whispers also overheard
by Gallagher’s defense attorney, Timothy Parlatore.
At the close of business in California, however, no action had been taken by embattled Rear Adm. Colin Green and new rumors percolated out of headquarters that senior officials had stepped in to halt the proceedings.
“We didn’t reach out to the president, but we’re grateful that he’s
taking this action,” Parlatore told Navy Times on Monday. “The idea that
even after everything Green did to still go after Eddie’s trident,
that’s not the action of a SEAL admiral. That’s the action of a petulant
child. It’s a good thing the adults in the room are standing up.”
Parlatore said he had yet to speak to Gallagher because it was 4 a.m. in
California when Hegseth announced the impending intervention by the
president.
“In 3 ½ hours, I have the expectation that Green might still pull
Eddie’s trident when he shows up for duty," Parlatore told Navy Times by
telephone.
Late Sunday, Parlatore emailed Green’s staff a scathing letter
addressed to the admiral, urging him to abandon “your fixation on
harming Eddie Gallagher and his family.”
“He has already suffered indignities that vastly outweigh the severity
of his alleged offenses. Continued unlawful attacks will serve only to
undermines your ability to effectively lead the NSW community,”
Parlatore wrote.
Pointing to interviews he conducted with a number of SEALs during his
defense of Gallagher, Parlatore wrote that he continued to hear a common
complaint that Green’s command “uses operators and then casts them away
like garbage the moment they no longer satisfy your needs.”
In the wake of Gallagher’s acquittal, Green in August issued a four-page “back to basics” directive designed to shore up shoddy conduct, restore moral accountability and create better leaders.
Released to senior leaders and then obtained by Navy Times, Green’s
guidance sought to return his SEAL and boat teams to standards expected
of service members across the fleet, with a mandate for leaders to
conduct “routine inspections of your units and strictly enforce all Navy
grooming and uniform standards, including adherence to all Navy
traditions, customs and ceremonies.”
But Parlatore’s letter warned Green that mandating haircuts, outlawing
unit patches “are not the problems” plaguing Naval Special Warfare and
instead directed Green’s attention to a high tempo of overseas
operations “and a lack of proper support from failed leaders” and
“scapegoating” Gallagher will only undermine “good order and discipline;
men are losing respect and confidence in their leadership.”
Pentagon officials did not respond to requests by Navy Times for comment, except to refer all questions to the White House.
Fox’s announcement of Trump’s impending action isn’t the first time he’s intervened in Gallagher’s case.
On March 30, the president took to Twitter to announce that he ordered
the Pentagon to release Gallagher from pretrial confinement in San
Diego’s Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar.
“In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher
will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his
day in court," Trump tweeted. “Process should move quickly!”
And it did, with Navy officials immediately moving to spring Gallagher from the brig.
A day after the verdict in Gallagher’s court-martial case, Trump also tweeted congratulations to the SEAL, his wife Andrea, and his entire family.
“You have been through much together. Glad I could help!” the president wrote.
And the president still wasn’t done with a case plagued by allegations of prosecutorial and police misconduct.
Before Gallagher’s trial kicked off, Navy judge Capt. Aaron Rugh
sanctioned prosecutors for violating the SEAL’s constitutional rights.
Part of his punishment included booting Cmdr. Christopher Czaplak, the lead prosecutor, for a warrantless surveillance program cooked up with NCIS agents to track emails sent by defense attorneys and Navy Times.
Agents and prosecutors also were accused of manipulating witness
statements to NCIS agents; using immunity grants and a bogus “target
letter” in a crude attempt to keep pro-Gallagher witnesses from
testifying; illegally leaking documents to the media to taint the
military jury pool; and then trying to cover it all up when they got
caught.
After the Navy bestowed achievement medals on several prosecutors and their enlisted aides, Trump stepped in on July 31 to nix the decorations, lampooning them as “ridiculously given" awards.
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/11/04/report-trump-makes-seal-gallagher-a-chief-again/
