Trump Wanted to Court Martial Navy SEAL Who Led Bin Laden Raid Because He Criticized Him Per Mark Esper
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Former President Donald Trump had to be talked out of a plan to reactivate and court-martial two U.S. military officers by not one, but two people, according to former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
Esper says he was one of those people to talk Trump out of the bizarre plan, which would have targeted vocal critics of his, U.S. Navy Adm. William McRaven and U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. McRaven led the raid on Osama Bin Laden. Esper wrote about the experience in his new book A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.
“The president told [Gen. Mark] Milley and me that he ‘want[ed] to call them [McChrystal and McRaven] back to active duty and court-martial them’ for what they said,” Esper wrote, according to a report from Talking Points Memo.
Esper added that he warned the president recalling two high-ranking members of the military and putting them each through a court-martial for being “disloyal” is not the best look.
“Doing this ‘will backfire on you, Mr. President,'” Esper recalls he and Milley telling Trump in May of 2020. The plan would have actually required reactivating both McRaven and McChrystal as the men are retired from military service.
Esper claims Trump’s outrage was further fueled and “spun up” by stories from right-wing outlets like Breitbart highlighting public criticisms of Trump from McRaven and McChrystal. Both men have been vocal about their disapproval of Trump, with McRaven even writing multiple op-eds blasting the former president’s aggressive relationship with the media, calling his attacks on the media “the greatest threat to democracy.”
Obviously, neither of the men ever faced Trump’s wrath through a court-martial, but Esper writes Trump only backed off his wild demand after Milley promised to call McRaven and McChrystal in an effort to get them to tone down their rhetoric.
McRaven has not publicly responded to whether there was a call, but McChrystal told Talking Points Memo that he recalls no such conversation.
“There was no call I remember — and I would have remembered that,” he said.
