NY Times Obtains Video of Navy SEAL Testimony Against Pardoned Eddie Gallagher: ‘The Guy is Freaking Evil’
The New York Times has obtained video of investigative interviews conducted with the Navy SEALs who accused Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher of war crimes, the most serious of which he was later acquitted. President Donald Trump pardoned Gallagher in November.
Gallagher was acquitted on charges of serious war crimes but convicted on one charge of posing for a photo with the body of a dead captive. The Times is releasing a trove of video evidence that includes interviews with the fellow Navy SEALs who turned Gallagher in, as well as helmet cam video that shows the captive shortly before he was killed.
The interviews feature some chilling assessments of Gallagher from the men who fought beside him:
“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator Miller told investigators. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told the investigators.
Such dire descriptions of Chief Gallagher, who had eight combat deployments and sometimes went by the nickname Blade, are in marked contrast to Mr. Trump’s portrayal of him at a recent political rally in Florida as one of “our great fighters.”
Though combat in Iraq barely fazed the SEALs, sitting down to tell Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents about what they had seen their platoon chief do during a 2017 deployment in Iraq was excruciating for them.
The video interviews are part of the Hulu streaming program “The Weekly,” but CBS News played some clips from the trove, as well as a response from Gallagher’s attorney.
“The jury heard all the evidence — the prosecution’s and the defense’s — and acquitted Eddie of every single serious charge. Enough said,” the attorney, Marc Mukasey, said in a statement.
Gallagher’s trial included a dramatic witness stand confession by a Navy SEAL medic in Gallagher’s unit who said he was responsible for the death of the prisoner of war, via suffocation, moments before Gallagher stabbed the Iraqi several times in the chest. In previous interviews, the medic had never mentioned this to prosecutors investigating the death.
Watch the clip above, via CBS News.
