President Donald Trump touted his record pardoning several service members accused of war crimes during his first term as president, and shared details about how now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth played a role securing those pardons.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Trump told The Spectator in a Thursday interview that Hegseth would call him to advocate on behalf of service members facing war crime charges who \u2018did what they were trained to do\u2019 during his first administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018What he wanted to talk about was military,\u2019 Trump said of Hegseth. \u2018In fact, whenever he called me, it was always to get somebody that was in trouble because he was too aggressive militarily out of a jail. You know, I got numerous soldiers out of jails because they did what they were trained to do.\u2019<\/p>\n
In November 2019, during his first administration, Trump issued pardons to Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, Army Maj. Mathew Golsteyn and Navy Special Warfare Operator Chief Eddie Gallagher. Lorance was serving a 19-year sentence in prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for murder for ordering his soldiers to open fire on unarmed Afghan civilians in 2012 when Trump issued the pardon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Golsteyn also faced charges for murdering an alleged Taliban bomb maker in 2010 and then burning the remains in a pit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gallagher also faced murder charges for stabbing an Islamic State prisoner in 2017, and was acquitted in July 2019. However, he was convicted for posing in a photo next to the corpse and subsequently was demoted one rank. Trump\u2019s pardon restored him to his previous rank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The liberals within the military put them in jails,\u2019 Trump told The Spectator. \u2018They teach him to be a soldier. They teach him to kill bad people, and when they kill bad people, they want to put them in jail for thirty years. And Pete was really into that.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hegseth, a former host with Fox News and member of the U.S. Army National Guard, was vocal about these cases ahead of their pardoning, and previously said Lorance, Golsteyn and Gallagher were not \u2018war criminals, they\u2019re warriors\u2019 during a 2019 segment with \u2018Fox & Friends.\u2019 Hegseth also interviewed Golsteyn in May 2019 on \u2018Fox & Friends.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Department of Defense referred Fox News Digital to the White House for comment. The White House did not provide additional comment, and it\u2019s unclear if the Trump administration is considering pardons for other service members accused of war crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During Hegseth\u2019s confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense in January, Hegseth told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee he wanted to ensure lawyers \u2018aren\u2019t the ones getting in the way\u2019 of service members serving on the frontlines from having \u2018opportunity to destroy\u2026 the enemy.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We follow rules, but we don\u2019t need burdensome rules of engagement that make it impossible for us to win these wars,\u2019 Hegseth said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lawmakers cited Hegseth\u2019s comments on the cases during his confirmation hearing, and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I., noted that fellow service members who served alongside Lorance and Gallagher spoke out against them and reported their actions.<\/p>\n
\u2018They did their duty as soldiers to report war crimes,\u2019 Reed said in January. \u2018Your definition of lethality seems to embrace those people who do commit war crimes, rather than those who stand up and say, \u2018This is not right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hegseth served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard, completing deployments to Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He earned two Bronze Star Medals, awarded to those who displayed heroic achievement or service in a combat zone.<\/p>\n\n
President Donald Trump touted his record pardoning several service members accused of war crimes during his first term as president, and shared details about how now-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth played a role securing those pardons.\u00a0 Trump told The Spectator in a Thursday interview that Hegseth would call him to advocate on behalf of service <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":37152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-37151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quickassetsmarket.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}