WATCH: Army Investigating GOP Candidate Who Doesn’t Think Joe Biden is President for This OAN Interview
Congressional candidate and Army Reserve 1st Lt. Alex Stovall is being investigated by the Army for campaigning while in uniform, including during a recent One America News interview.
Stovall is running for Congress in the Arizona 9th — a seat currently held by Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton — and recently appeared for a lengthy interview on OAN’s Real America With Dan Ball.
Stovall and host Dan Ball chopped it up for a good 10 minutes, mostly focusing on criticizing establishment Republicans and “continuing what Trump started,” with a brief attempt at Trumpian nicknaming when Stovall referred to Rep. Stanton as “Light-Rail Greg.”
That interview has landed Stovall on the Army’s radar for potentially running afoul of regulations on political activities while in uniform, reports Task & Purpose’s Haley Britzky:
Soldiers not on active duty are prohibited from participating “in any partisan political activity in uniform,” according to Army regulations, but have a bit more freedom to express themselves politically than soldiers on active duty.
Lt. Col. Simon Flake, an Army Reserve spokesman, said on Friday that the service is “aware of the situation and are investigating,” though he did not clarify what specifically was being investigated due to its ongoing nature.
“The U.S. Army Reserve follows the Department of Defense’s long standing policy regarding service member involvement in partisan political campaigns to avoid the perception of DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of any partisan political candidate, campaign, or cause,” Flake said.
Stovall did not respond to questions from Task & Purpose for this article, though his press secretary told Army Times, who first reported the investigation, that the campaign “has followed all USAR and DOD regulations.”
Stovall is also the subject of a complaint letter from Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for, among other things, denying that President Joe Biden is, in fact, the president.
Weinstein cited an April interview in which Stovall cracked “We saw the inauguration of this well, I don’t think he’s President but whoever you would call this sleepy guy in office.”
Weinstein also noted in his letter that “Numerous social media posts on I LT Stovall’s congressional campaign Facebook and Twitter accounts express similar contempt for President Biden, and advance the delusion that the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump — the “big lie” that resulted in the January 6 Capitol insurrection.”
According to The Army Times, a Stovall spokesman now says that “Candidate Stovall recognize[s] Mr. Biden’s authority through the chain of command.”
The Army Times also said, of Weinstein’s complaint, that UCMJ provisions prohibiting commissioned officers from saying “contemptuous words” against the president, vice president, Congress and other senior government officials “typically do not apply to off-duty reserve component troops, though.”
Watch the interview above via OAN.
