In The Dark - Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and the Future of American War-Crimes Prosecutions

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense caught the attention of the In the Dark team. Hegseth, formerly a weekend co-host of “Fox & Friends,” is a longtime supporter of accused American war criminals, and has called Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL who was tried for murder and other crimes, a “war hero.” The reporters Madeleine Baran and Parker Yesko discuss what Hegseth’s appointment could mean for war-crimes prosecutions under the Trump Administration.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Are you recording? Yes, I am. All right. Let's do it. Hey, In the Dark listeners, it's Madeline Barron. And Parker Yesko. Hey, guys. We're back in your feed today because there's been some recent news that feels really relevant to a lot of the things that we reported on in Season 3. It has to do with one of the appointments that incoming President Donald Trump has recently announced. And this appointment got the attention of our entire team because it could make it even harder for war criminals in the United States to be held accountable.

If you've listened to season three, you know that our reporting found how hard it is already for people accused of war crimes to be punished in any kind of meaningful way. And it is most likely about to get a lot harder. We're talking specifically here about the man Trump has decided he wants to nominate for secretary of defense. This is a man Parker and I are both very familiar with. We're talking, of course, about Pete Hegseth. And the reason we're so familiar with Pete Hegseth is because Hegseth has been one of the most outspoken defenders of Americans accused of war crimes in the entire country. Yeah, and we've been talking a lot on our team about what his hypothetical confirmation could mean for convicted war criminals and American service members accused of war crimes in the future. At a certain point, we thought we should stop talking about it just between us and talk about it with you guys, too.

Right. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and what their views on American war crimes prosecutions are and then what it might mean for the future. All right, Parker, let's get into it. Let's start with Pete Hegseth. He's Trump's pick for secretary of defense. And this is a person that, Parker, I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about over the past four years. Yeah, I mean, Pete Hegseth is an interesting pick. He has no experience working in government other than being a veteran. He's 44. He was until last week the weekend co-host of Fox and Friends. He's from Minnesota. He went to Princeton. He worked as an analyst at Bear Stearns, and he joined the Minnesota National Guard. And as an officer, he deployed to Iraq and to Afghanistan and to Guantanamo Bay.

And then there are the more attention grabbing aspects of his biography. Yeah. I mean, there's so much we can talk about with Hegseth. Like if we really get into it, that, of course, has nothing to do with war crimes. like if we really get into it, that, of course, has nothing to do with war crimes. I think one of the first things that for a long time, at least, comes to mind when you think of Pete Hegseth is this moment that went viral in 2015 where I was actually watching this again the other day. He was literally throwing an axe live on television on Fox. Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth aiming for accuracy and missing. And the reason this went viral is because he threw the axe kind of too high and too far.

What you didn't see on air is what the axe hit. Or should we say who? Drum roll, please. And he hit a West Point drummer who was like drumming in the background, like mid-drum. Ouch! And it became this viral moment. So I think a lot of people's first Pete Hegseth moment was this really out of nowhere, out of context, like silly video, not silly to the guy who was getting hit by the axe, video of someone getting hit. So there's that.

Maybe not silly to Hegseth either. I think the guy sued him in the end. That is true. There's also the controversial tattoos that Hegseth has. As a member of the Army National Guard, he was actually pulled from a deployment to Washington, D.C. for Biden's inauguration because one of his fellow guardsmen reported that he had a tattoo that said Deus Vult, which the guardsman said was a white supremacist tattoo and a sign of extremism and that it perhaps made Hegseth an insider threat. Hegseth has denied that his tattoos have extremist meaning. Yeah. And then Hegseth said he resigned from the guard after that, sort of done with the military. You know, all of this is interesting because, you know, if this is a man who the military doesn't trust to provide security for an incoming president's inauguration,

and yet Trump is saying that he can literally run the entire Defense Department, that's something certainly worth paying attention to. There's also statements that Hegseth has made that have gotten a lot of attention about how women shouldn't serve roles in combat. And then, of course, there's the allegation that he sexually assaulted a woman in a hotel room in California back in 2017. This is a claim that I should say he denies. And it's worth noting that he was never charged with any crime, though he does acknowledge that he paid the woman an undisclosed amount of money. So there are all of those issues about Hegseth. But what we really wanted to focus on right now are Hegseth's views on war crimes and people accused of war crimes, because Hegseth is someone who has directly put himself in the middle of these cases. He has lobbied Trump in

Trump's first term on behalf of several men who are accused of egregious war crimes, some of them convicted of those crimes. He's encouraged Trump to dismiss the charges against them, to let them go free, to prevent basically any accountability for some of these crimes committed by American service members. And he has used his position as a co-host on Fox to really popularize the causes of these men accused of war crimes. First of all, I can't stand that headline accused of war crimes, that this is these are these are men who went into the most dangerous places on earth with a job to defend us and made tough calls on a moment's notice. They're not war criminals. They're warriors who have now been accused of certain things that are under review.

Yeah. During Trump's first term, Hegseth covered alleged war criminals quite extensively. He would invite them onto his show. He, in private, reportedly nudged Trump to pardon several of them in public from the couch at Fox and Friends. He seemed to talk directly to Trump when he covered the cases of these men and said, you know, these men are being persecuted and they are war heroes. This president recognizes the injustice of you. You train someone to go fight and kill the enemy. Then they go kill the enemy the way someone doesn't like. And then we put him in jail or we throw the book at them. And in Clint Lawrence's case, here's a guy who is on Fox and Friends every weekend as a co-host.

He knows Trump is watching. He knows millions of other people are watching, too. And he's using that platform as a way to bring on people who've been convicted or charged with war crimes and give them what I think anybody would describe as a pretty sympathetic platform to talk about their case and talk about why they think they've been wronged. Yeah. And in particular, he's championed a handful of cases. These cases are very familiar to us because we spent the past four years constructing an enormous database of alleged war crimes committed by American service members since 9-11. And these cases are all in our database. We're going to take a quick break here, but we'll be right back. Hi, this is David Remnick, and I'm pleased to share the news that

I'm Not a Robot, a live-action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series, has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought-provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video. So let's talk about these guys that Hegseth has really focused on. Well, first there's Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher. There's a Green Beret named Matthew Goldstein. And there's an Army Lieutenant, Clint Lowrance, who at the time was serving

a 19-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth for murder. These were all people who Hegseth advocated should be pardoned. And these crimes that these men are accused of and in some cases convicted of are really serious. And I think that sometimes when we follow, you know, we hear about these cases in the news and the context of Hegseth, they're given, the crimes themselves are given a passing mention. It'll be something like, you know, Goldstein, comma, charged with, and then just a couple

of words. And I do think it's important for people to really understand what these men who the future Secretary of Defense potentially was advocating for, you know, these people that he was supporting, what they were actually accused of and charged with. So let's get into what these people were actually doing during their time in the military that got them in trouble. Yeah. So who are these guys? So Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher was charged with murder and attempted murder.

In May 2017, Gallagher allegedly stabbed a teenage captive whose name was Khaled Jamal Abdullah. Now, Abdullah had been fighting with ISIS, but at the time he died, he was detained by Navy SEALs, he was in custody, and he was seriously injured. And Gallagher's own platoon mates who witnessed the incident reported it up the chain of command. They ended up telling investigators about other alleged war crimes that Gallagher had committed. They said he'd shot two civilians, an old man and a young girl in separate incidents. The New York Times got this incredible video footage of members of Gallagher's own SEAL team, clearly completely disturbed by what they'd witnessed when they were overseas

with him, telling naval investigators that Gallagher was, quote, freaking evil and, quote, perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving. Hegseth called Gallagher a war hero. He featured him and some ex-special operations guys in a long Veterans Day TV special that they filmed in an empty restaurant. They all sat around a table drinking red wine. Welcome to Modern Warriors, a Veterans Day special. I'm your host, Pete Hegseth. Sitting with me are the best of the best our country has to offer. Four accomplished special operators and patriots who put their life on the line to defend our great country. Pete Hegseth also had Matthew Goldstein on the show. Goldstein was charged with premeditated murder for allegedly killing a detainee.

The incident came to light after Goldstein interviewed at the CIA for a job during a polygraph exam as part of that interview. He admitted, according to investigative records, that he and other members of his unit had interrogated a man who they suspected of being a Taliban bomb maker. But they took him home because they didn't have enough evidence against him to hold him. And instead of releasing him, they killed him. And then they buried him home because they didn't have enough evidence against him to hold him. And instead of releasing him, they killed him and then they buried him. And then later that night, they went and dug him up and burned his body. What Goldstein allegedly admitted to is a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It's a war crime. But Hegseth, in segments about Goldstein, described it as if it was like everyday business. If he committed premeditated murder, then Duncan did as well, then I did as well. What do you think you do in war? Put me in jail then. Put us all in jail. And that's how we feel about cases like Eddie Gallagher. Same with Clint Lawrence. Finally, there's the third person that Hegseth has really advocated for is this Lieutenant Clint Lawrence. Yeah, so Clint Lowrance was a platoon leader in Afghanistan, and he was convicted of two counts of murder. Lowrance had told his platoon one morning that anyone they saw on motorcycles should be deemed hostile and shot upon sight. And the members of his platoon heard this. They knew that this was totally outside of the rules of engagement. I think they probably didn't take the order very seriously.

But when they went out on patrol later that day, they saw a motorcycle going by. It had three men on it, and Lowrance ordered them to shoot the men. One of his soldiers shot towards the men, didn't hit him. They stopped. They got off the motorcycle. And then Lowrance again said, shoot them, these unarmed men just standing stopped. They got off the motorcycle. And then Lowrance again said, shoot them, these unarmed men just standing in the road next to the motorcycle. And one of Lowrance's men followed the order and shot and killed two of the men in the road. And Lowrance's

soldiers were so disturbed by this, many of them reported him up the chain of command. Many of them have been really vocal in media about how distressing it was to be led by Lowrance, who they said had also done other things like shot at civilians, threatened civilians. And Lowrance actually, you know, in no small part because of his platoon mates or his platoon members, you know, reporting what they'd seen was convicted and sentenced. Yeah, I mean, all three of these men, the military believed had committed war crimes. And a lot of the evidence against them were members of the military, like you say, coming forward. And so, you know, it was lawyers, it was commanders, it was people in their own unit thinking that they'd done something that was indefensible. And, you know, these...

And criminal, exactly. Clearly criminal. Yeah, and, you know, so what Hegseth was doing, Hegseth was saying, these men should have no accountability. These men should not serve a day in prison. These men... These men are heroes. Exactly. We train these guys.

They're the best of the best. We want to unleash them to go kill them and then if they make one tiny mistake in the split of battle or something goes wrong then a lawyer in the Pentagon based on some rules that were written in an air-conditioned offices or is he gonna Monday morning quarterback them and say you know what that deserves 20 or 25 or 30 years to life I mean basically if someone views the killing is politically incorrect or not tech absolutely textbook then they go away. We're talking about warfighters who deserve real

justice. They're heroes. They did exactly what we sent them to do. We shouldn't constrain them. They're fierce fighters and, you know, we should honor them. They're being persecuted. And maybe not surprisingly, Hegseth has also made a number of statements that seem to even call into question the idea that there should be any laws of war at all or any rules of engagement. I mean, he's written about dropping nuclear bombs on Japan in World War II. And he said, talking about the Americans, quote, they won. Who cares about the question of whether or not that was a war crime? about the question of, you know, whether or not that was a war crime. He's also said another point,

our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms 80 years ago. And he seems to be referring to the Geneva Conventions there. He asked in the book, should we even follow them? These, of course, are the laws, the international laws from post-World War II that were meant to ensure that like the atrocities of the world wars weren't repeated. Right. And, you know, it's no small thing to make it a crime to kill a civilian. It's very different to have that be legal. And so he's calling that whole idea into question, like war is war and what happens happens. And this is part of this larger belief system. And he really believes more broadly

that the military has been taken over by the left and that this decision to prosecute a handful of service members for war crimes is an example of this broader leftist takeover. His overall argument is basically that the left has made the military it's too soft too unfocused too weak not masculine too feminine um you know too focused on what he describes as woke politics too focused on diversity too focused on name your buzzword too focused on those things absurd it is to like accuse the military of being like overly woke it's an institution that like almost no one would say that of but then again this is a thing that has gotten a lot of traction on the right. This idea that even the military has been infiltrated in this way, that like they cannot even spare the military.

Our last defense. You and I have both been reading Hegseth's book, which he published this year, The War on Warriors. And it is full of some incredible quotes that I think really get you into his mind about what he means by a leftist takeover of the military. Yeah, we've pulled up a couple of quotes that we think are pretty representative. So let's just read a few of them. So at one point, he says that he wants what he calls a, quote, frontal assault on the military to recapture it from the left. He says we need to clean house of woke generals. He says, quote, so-called diversity is not our strength. It is our weakness.

Our troops are fighters, not gender studies freshmen. While America may run on Duncan, our military runs on masculinity, properly channeled. It's not toxic at all. It's necessary. Just because the rest of our culture has gone soft and effeminate and apologetic doesn't mean our military can afford to. America is still full of young, strong alpha males who love their country and want to defend their family. But those young males see a military that doesn't want to recruit them. So you get what the hard left really wants, soft men and a weak military, neutered at home and neutered abroad.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that really does give you a sense of how his views on war crimes are part of this much larger philosophy. And I mean, it remains to be seen like what this actually would look like. I mean, what does it look like to take this worldview and put it at the top of the Defense Department? I mean, that's like my question. Like, what is this? What does this mean? It's like one thing to be at the very least on Fox and Friends as the weekend co-host saying this stuff or writing a book about it. It's a whole different thing to be in charge of more than a million active duty service members with this philosophy. I think at the very least, it means that he would have the commander in chief's

ear all the time. And he sort of already did in his role as a guy on TV, but now it would be his job and it would be Trump's job to listen. Exactly. I should say we did reach out to Hegseth for comment, but we haven't heard back. And we also reached out to the Trump transition team, but we haven't gotten a comment from them. All right, we're going to take a quick break here, but we'll be right back. Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm proud to share the news that three films from the New Yorker documentary series have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. And they are Incident, Seat 31, Zoe Zephyr, and Eternal Father. And they all immerse you

in the finest cinematic journalism, exploring themes of justice, identity, and the bonds that shape us. These extraordinary films, which were created by established filmmakers, as well as emerging artists, will inform, challenge, and move you. I encourage you to watch them along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video.

There is, of course, a lot of news that's happening very quickly around the incoming Trump administration and the whole transition. And it's unclear if Pete Hegseth is really going to end up Secretary of Defense. You know, he would need to either be confirmed by the Senate or there's been some suggestion that Trump could use a recess appointment to get him in without Senate confirmation. And the other thing we should say is that all of this is changing rapidly. It seems with almost every passing hour at this point, even as we were recording this episode, we got the news that Trump's pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, had just dropped out. So we're not sure if Hegseth will make it

through. But regardless of whether Hegseth does or not, Trump is the next president. Trump is going to be the commander in chief. And Trump himself has, of course, been incredibly clear about how he views war crimes and Americans accused of them. Some of these soldiers are people that have fought hard, long. You know, we teach them how to be great fighters. And then when they fight, sometimes they get really treated very unfairly. Yeah, I mean, basically everything we've talked about with Hegseth is the same worldview that Trump shares. Trump, when Hegseth was advocating on behalf of Gallagher and Goldstein and these service members being charged with war crimes, Trump was tweeting at Pete Hegseth about them. Trump tweeted in 2019, we train our boys to be killing machines, then prosecute them when they kill.

Right. And he's also like Hegseth. He's called into question, should we even have Geneva Conventions? Are they even a good idea? Like in 2016, Trump was at a town hall and he said, quote, the problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations. So the soldiers are afraid to fight. We can't waterboard, but they can chop off heads. And then he said, I think we've got to make some changes, some adjustments. Yeah, I mean, in Trump's first term, he intervened in several war crimes cases. He pardoned Goldstein. He pardoned Clint Lowrance.

He pardoned another army officer who we haven't talked about here, a guy named Michael Behenna. Behenna had been convicted of taking a detainee who he was supposed to release to a remote location and shooting him dead. And then the man's body was burned with an incendiary grenade. And then Trump intervened in Gallagher's case. He got Gallagher released from the brig while he waited for trial. He reversed a demotion that Gallagher was sentenced to. He tweeted congratulations at Gallagher after he was acquitted of murder. I mean, and at every turn that he's doing these things, what he's saying is, I disagree. Trump is saying, I disagree with the military. I disagree with your decision to charge this person.

I disagree with the service members who sat on a jury and convicted this person. I disagree with that decision. And it gets to this larger issue of Trump's, I mean, I guess we could say complicated relationship with the military. Like on the one hand, Trump clearly loves the pageantry of the military. He loves military parades. He loves the idea of tough talking generals. He, you know, often thinks in cinematic ways. He talks about this, you know, this person straight out of central casting. He has this idea of a warrior, like a violent fighter that he clearly admires. And so all of that, he's, you know, very into praising the military for those types of things. On the other hand,

he has criticized the military and gone so far in those criticisms that I think it's safe to say that they go far beyond what, at least in our lifetimes, we've seen any president or major party presidential candidate do. I mean, there's all kinds of things that Trump has said that are sort of third rails, like criticizing four-star generals or criticizing people that everyone, whether you like these people or not, agrees are war heroes, like what Trump said about John McCain. Yeah, I mean, he called John McCain, he said John McCain is not a war hero. He said because he was captured. He said, I like people who weren't captured. or held as POWs and that Trump called them, quote, losers and suckers. Trump denies this. And then you wrap in all of Trump's other talk, very similar to what we were talking about with

Hegseth, talking about woke generals, the need to clean house. He's floated the idea of what he's calling a warrior board. This would be something that's made up of retired military officials who could basically recommend which generals should be purged for bad leadership. This is like the way the woke generals will be eradicated from the military. He's talked about how he believes that DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion, has infiltrated the military in a way that has been destructive. He basically takes all of his larger cultural grievances that he might have about any institution and says, like, yes, I'm applying these also to the military. The biggest institution of all.

Right. And so when we think about Trump's actions on war crimes, this is how we're trying to we're thinking about all of these things and we're trying to think about what is he actually going to do as commander in chief? do as commander in chief. I mean, I think we've seen with this first administration that it is a fool's errand to try to predict on a policy level what is actually going to happen in a Trump administration. I think that's fair to say. But I do think that there are certain things that we're going to be watching for. I think we could say that. Yeah. I mean, first off, will he pardon more convicted war criminals or people charged with war crimes? Right. Or will he push for, on a broader level, will he pardon more convicted war criminals or people charged with war crimes? Right. Or will he push for, on a broader level, changes to the laws of war, changes to the rules of engagement, or even intervene in the military justice system to try to tweak things procedurally or otherwise to make it easier for people that are accused of war crimes to defend themselves?

And if he does those things, you know, how will people in the military react? The military is not a monolith. We know there are folks in the military that have disagreed with many of Trump's decisions already. What will they think of what comes next? And of course, the question of whether people in the military will resist any of this. I mean, we saw that in Trump's first term that there were people who've now written bestselling books about it, who were inside the government, at least according to them, trying to stop some of what Trump wanted to do. So it wasn't the case that Trump just got to do everything that he wanted to, much to Trump's frustration. And of course, with Trump, there's

always this question of if this is all just on some level bluster or just talk that ignites the passions of the base. That is hard to predict. It's hard to predict really in any presidency because, you know, regardless of what a president comes in saying that they want to do and or believes that they want to do. A lot of times presidencies aren't dictated by those agenda items that you come in with. They're dictated by what happens items that you come in with. They're dictated by what happens in world events, national events. I mean, think about like Biden with the war in Gaza. That is absolutely not, I'm assuming, how he came into his administration thinking he would be spending more than a year of his time. Yeah, we just we don't know what will happen during Trump's presidency, but we will definitely be watching.

Absolutely. All right, Parker. Well, thanks for talking to me about all this. Thanks for having me. We'll see what happens next. And as always, if you have story tips or ideas for what we should cover next, you can email them to us at inthedarkatnewyorker.com. And if you're interested more in what Parker and I are talking about with this database we've been referring to of possible war crimes that we created for The New Yorker, you can find that database at newyorker.com slash season three.