Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer said on Friday he believes Eddie Gallagher should face a board review which could strip him of his Navy SEAL Trident – setting up a possible showdown between Navy leaders and President Trump.
“I believe the process matters for good order and discipline,” Spencer said of the pending board review.
“The SecNav is staking his position,” one Pentagon official told the Washington Examiner, using military slang to describe Spencer’s job. “He’s making clear he disagrees with the commander in chief. The same goes for the head of the SEALs.”
Following Trump’s decision to restore Gallagher’s rank last week, Rear Adm. Collin Green, who oversees the SEAL community, announced he would order a review of Gallagher’s position within the SEAL community. Trump countermanded that decision on Thursday morning, when he tweeted, “The Navy will NOT be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin. This case was handled very badly from the beginning. Get back to business!”
Navy chief of information Rear Adm. Charlie Brown issued a statement later that day, which said, “The Navy follows the lawful orders of the president. We will do so in case of an order to stop the administrative review of SOC Gallagher’s professional qualification. We are aware of the president’s tweet, and we are awaiting further guidance.”
Several legal experts told the Washington Examiner that the tweet clearly expressed the president’s wishes.
“This is an order directed at Adm. Green, he’s the one doing this,” Gallagher lawyer Tim Parlatore said.
“There is no need for a clarification,” Jeremiah Sullivan, a military lawyer who worked on Gallagher’s case, said.
Parlatore accused Navy leaders earlier this month of “conspiring” to pull Gallagher’s Trident. He also filed an inspector general complaint against Green on Tuesday, accusing the admiral of insubordination, and calling for his removal.
Green would not pursue the review without some kind of “top cover” from senior military leaders like Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer, according to a military lawyer and former judge advocate general who spoke to the Washington Examiner. “I would find it extraordinarily hard to believe that Green is doing this in a vacuum.”
Gallagher, 40, was charged in 2018 for war crimes while deployed in 2017 to Iraq. Following a high-profile trial, he was found not guilty of murdering an injured ISIS fighter and of shooting at civilians. He was convicted of posing for a picture with the dead ISIS fighter. As a result, he was reduced in rank from chief petty officer to petty officer. Last week, President Trump restored Gallagher’s rank, but the Naval Special Warfare Commander, Rear Adm. Collin Green, countered with announcing he would review Gallagher’s Trident.
Trump has intervened on Gallagher’s behalf several times throughout his case, while Navy leaders have continued to pursue disciplinary action against him. Trump first intervened in Gallagher’s case prior to his trial, when he ordered him to be removed from the Navy’s brig in August. When members of the Navy’s prosecution team were awarded medals for their work despite losing the case, he had the awards rescinded.
Sullivan said he believes Spencer wants to support the Navy’s uniformed leadership but noted that those officers have an obligation to support the commander in chief.
“Adm. Green has set up a showdown between himself and President Trump,” Sullivan said. “If he disagrees with President Trump, then he should resign, and not make some national embarrassment for himself and the Navy. It’s a disgrace.”
As the head of Naval Special Warfare Command, Green has administrative authority over Gallagher that is separate from the criminal case brought against him earlier this year.
As such, one retired military judge advocate general said, Green is within his rights to pursue administrative action against him.
“I think the leadership of Navy special operations has legitimate concern over whether there’s been a kind of erosion of standards within that community,” former military judge advocate general Geoffrey Corn told the Washington Examiner.
“The fact that Gallagher was acquitted of the more serious offenses, but convicted of this offense, could justifiably lead a commander to say, ’You know, I don’t care that you were acquitted of homicide, what you did was wrong … and because of that, if I don’t take some measure against you, I am in a sense endorsing or tolerating this highly publicized incident, and that’s going to be negative.’”
The Navy will continue the review process until it receives formal orders from the administration, legal experts told the Washington Examiner. Resignations and firings may result from the dispute, the experts said.
As a serving military officer, Green must either obey or disobey Trump’s order. Previously, officers have resigned over orders they decided not to carry out. During the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur publicly disputed President Harry Truman’s strategy and subsequently was fired in 1951.
