"You could tell he was
perfectly ok with killing anybody that was moving," a medic from
Gallagher's platoon told Navy investigators.
Just days after President
Donald Trump hosted former
Navy SEAL and convicted war criminal Eddie Gallagher at his Mar-a-Lago
residence, video recordings obtained by
the New York Times showed Gallagher's subordinates describing their
platoon leader as "freaking evil" and a cold-blooded murderer who
"just wants to kill anybody he can."
"You could tell he was
perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving," Special Operator
First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told Navy officials in 2018 as
they investigated Gallagher's conduct during a 2017 tour of duty in Iraq.
"The guy was toxic,"
said Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper.
Gallagher has been accused by
his fellow Navy SEALs of an array
of war crimes, from spraying civilian neighborhoods with rockets to
shooting a young Iraqi girl in the stomach with a sniper rifle. The Times reported
Friday that Gallagher's platoon members said he would boast that "burqas
were flying."
In July, Gallagher was
convicted by a military jury of posing with the corpse of an ISIS fighter
but acquitted of
stabbing a 15-year-old captive to death. As the Times notes,
"Crucially, one SEAL who had accused the chief during the
investigation—Special Operator Scott—changed his story on the witness stand,
testifying that he and not Chief Gallagher had caused the captive's
death."
Sparking outrage from
activists and some military officials, Trump—who repeatedly
intervened in the Navy SEAL's case—pardoned Gallagher and other
soldiers in November. Trump also reversed Gallagher's demotion, allowing the
now-retired Navy SEAL to collect
an additional $200,000 pension he would have forfeited.
This past weekend, Trump
welcomed Gallagher to his Mar-a-Lago resort, where the former SEAL thanked Trump
with an unspecified "gift" from his Iraq deployment.
According to the New York
Times, which obtained a trove of evidence from the Navy's investigation into
Gallagher, "platoon members said they saw Chief Gallagher shoot civilians
and fatally stab a wounded captive with a hunting knife."
The Times continued:
Video from a SEAL's helmet
camera, included in the trove of materials, shows the barely conscious
captive—a teenage Islamic State fighter so thin that his watch slid easily up
and down his arm—being brought in to the platoon one day in May 2017. Then the
helmet camera is shut off.
In the video interviews with
investigators, three SEALs said they saw Chief Gallagher go on to stab the
sedated captive for no reason, and then hold an impromptu re-enlistment
ceremony over the body, as if it were a trophy.
"I was listening to it,
and I was just thinking, like, this is the most disgraceful thing I've ever
seen in my life," Special Operator Miller, who has since been promoted to
chief, told investigators.
Critics said the testimony of
the SEAL platoon makes Trump's widely condemned decision to pardon Gallagher
even more appalling.
"President Trump pardoned
a serial killer," tweeted Daily
Beast reporter Scott Bixby.
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