The crimes he stands accused of were committed in 2017 during a deployment in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. He could be sentenced to life in prison if found guilty. Gallagher’s appearance at Mar-a-Lago came as little surprise to some observers, among them the legal analyst Glenn Kirschner, who accused Trump in a tweet of ushering in “the death of decency”.Įarlier, Gallagher was pictured with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr, at a conservative student action summit hosted by the campus activist group Turning Point USA in West Palm Beach, according to the New York Post.Gallagher now faces charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder and obstruction of justice. Navy secretary Richard Spencer was ousted by the White House in the aftermath of the controversy, and wrote a scathing opinion piece for the Washington Post attacking Trump for his “shocking and unprecedented” intervention in Gallagher’s case, and claiming the president “has very little understanding” of how the military works. Gallagher was allowed to retire from the service as a Seal, retaining an additional $200,000 pension he would have forfeited had his demotion stood. “The case was handled very badly from the beginning.” “The Navy will NOT be taking away War Fighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident pin,” Trump tweeted on 21 November. Just weeks before Trump interceded, Adm Mike Gilday, the US navy’s chief of operations, denied Gallagher’s request for clemency and upheld a sentence of a reduction in rank. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” Gallagher had boasted in an email to a friend that contained a photograph of him holding the deceased captive by the head.

In Gallagher’s case, Trump ordered a promotion for the special warfare operator first class who had been cleared by a military jury in 2018 of murder but convicted of posing with the body.

Trump angered military leaders in November when he granted clemency to Gallagher as one of a number of interventions in cases of service members accused of killings in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Navy seals warned war crimes