The Court-martial was a bit like a hearing before the Schiff committee; some exculpatory witnesses were not allowed to testify, and the court-martial seemed to be conducted in a way that was supposed to guarantee a conviction. Except, as noted above, Chief Gallagher was acquitted of all the charges except for the photograph. Chief Gallagher did not testify at his court-martial, but did issue a statement saying that he takes “full responsibility” for his actions, and added, “This has put a black eye on the two communities I love: The United States Marine Corps and the Navy.”
Despite the acquittal on the most serious charges, the Court came down hard on him, seeking to break him in rank and withdraw his Trident pin, the emblem worn by Navy SEALS.
But the details of the case are not the issue here. This became a topic for discussion because President Trump had reviewed this case, along with several others, and thought that Chief Gallagher’s case had not been handled in a fair way. He had served 201 days in detention prior to his trial, first in a brig and then, after the President took notice, in confinement. Reasonable people may argue the details of the case, or whether it was fitting and proper for President Trump to take an interest in the case. The Navy Secretary, Richard Spencer, a Trump appointee, did not think so, and made his position clear, as was his right. Of course, this put him at odds with the Commander-in-Chief, and Defense Secretary Esper, at the order of President Trump, fired Secretary Spencer, as was his right.
We noted in last week’s column several instances where Presidents fired senior officers for publicly disagreeing with them; we could have named more, including President Lincoln, who removed several generals until he found the right commander in General Ulysses Grant. One of them, George McClellan, had so disturbed the President by his caution and inaction that President Lincoln commented, “If General McClellan does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a time.” Fair or not, Lincoln was the Commander-in-Chief, and he eventually removed McClellan.
One could argue that President Lincoln should have stayed out of the operations of the Army, and left it to the generals, but President Lincoln was tired of stalemate, defeat, and rising casualties, and fairly or not, used his power to sack McClellan (and others); just as had other Presidents before and since.
The idea that a President who can remove a general cannot remove the Secretary of the Navy is absurd, and although we understand Mr. Spencer’s concern for the integrity of the chain of command and for the need to punish war crimes, it rings somewhat hollow when it involves his own rebuke of the chain of command and approving action to punish a defendant who has been acquitted of every charge except posing for a photograph.
In similarity with the State Department officials who expressed disagreement with President Trump’s actions in reference to his phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Mr. Spencer comes off as another bureaucrat who knows more than his boss, and who believes that his policy is better than the President’s. As journalist Sharyl Attkisson puts it,” Like the diplomats who testified against Trump, the ex-Navy Secretary seems to think he/they run the show and lose their mind when the President exerts his constitutional authority over something they disagree with.”
Mr. Spencer attempted to finesse the Gallagher case, and ended up finessing himself out of a job. Chief Gallagher, we think, retired on November 30, at his full rank and with his Trident pin. There may have been much more to this case behind the scenes, and perhaps we will never know what it was, if anything; but the circumstances of his prosecution should have raised serious questions, and President Trump (and fifty members of Congress) were within their rights to ask those questions