The Line (2021–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Episode #1.3 - full transcript
Special
operations chief, Edward Gallagher,
stabbed a 15-year-old
ISIS prisoner to death.
He's also accused of shooting
at Iraqi civilians on several occasions.
He'd been decorated
with a chest full of medals,
but today, Navy SEAL platoon leader,
Eddie Gallagher, wore shackles.
Prosecutors claim
Gallagher took a photo with the corpse
and sent it to friends
with messages such as,
"I got this one with my hunting knife."
This Navy SEAL, now charged
with premeditated murder.
I got arrested,
and they handcuffed me,
and then they brought me to the brig.
And I'm like, "There is a huge mistake
going on here," because... I don't know...
I didn't understand what reason
they had to throw me in prison.
I walked in,
these guards were staring at me,
and they even asked me, like,
"Do you know why you're here?"
And I was like, "No."
They were like, "Well, what do you think?"
And I said, "What, for killing ISIS?"
And they were like, "Yeah."
I said it as a joke,
but when they were like, "Yeah,"
I was like, "Okay…
…what the fuck?"
I hadn't been charged with anything.
I hadn't... Nothing was brought up to me.
At that point, I was in survival mode,
just trying to figure out,
how did this happen?
Why am I here?
How can I get out of here?
We're here to train and go to war.
I was like, "Hell yeah. Let's do this."
These men were my family, my brothers.
This bond of warfighters.
You could just tell
that something was off.
There was this undercurrent
in this platoon.
How do you sleep at night
knowing what you did?
I just saw it as good versus evil.
It's that simple.
This is a prepaid call from…
Eddie.
A prisoner
at the Naval Consolidated Brig at Miramar.
To accept this call, press five now.
- Hey, baby.
- Hi, Dad.
Hey.
- Hi, baby.
- What are you guys doing?
Oh, nothing.
I was gonna let Ryan answer it.
Hey, bud.
Hi.
- What are you up to?
- Nothing.
From when he got taken,
it was just a crash course
in how to save a life, basically.
There's no road map to guide you
when you're in a situation like this.
You don't know how to wade through it.
I wanted to, you know,
lay down on the floor and cry.
I was at the point of exhaustion
and couldn't go any further.
Imagine talking to a person
in the saddest, darkest place…
…and it is impossible to pull them out.
It's not as if, when he's on the phone
with me in the brig,
I can say, "Hey, cheer up, bucko."
And the accusations were serious.
Eddie's charge sheet was long
and it was harrowing.
It's that first thing you see that says,
"United States government v. Gallagher."
I'm like, "Fuck.
United States versus Gallagher. Fuck."
I was scared. They could send Eddie
to prison for the rest of his life.
This is not even a fog of war
judgment call kind of situation.
These are premeditated,
cold-blooded murders.
It gives everyone a bad name,
every veteran that served.
This guy was a serial killer
who was in the military
so he could do it in legal ways.
The most damning thing about it is it...
How rare is it for SEAL team members
to actually come out publicly?
When professional killers say
that someone's killing too much,
we should lean in and listen.
Eddie gets arrested,
and it hits the newswire right away.
Boom. Eddie Gallagher, arrested.
You know, they... they push the narrative
of this man was killing children,
women, old people, indiscriminately.
This man cut off
the head of an ISIS fighter.
I'm having my family hit me up,
sending me articles
about this guy that I know saying,
"Look at how horrible this is,"
not realizing that I was there,
not realizing that I'm in that photo.
I need to understand the reality
of, you know, what's going on here.
But I say, you know what?
I hate to do this,
but I need to go talk with Eddie.
This dude is on CNN as a war criminal,
and I'm going in there visiting him.
This isn't a good career choice.
This isn't a good thing to do other than
that it was the right thing to do.
I put on my dress uniform,
I went down there,
and I signed myself into the brig.
Gio came to visit me,
which I was surprised about.
I was very paranoid.
I played it cool, but I was like,
I don't trust anybody at this point.
If people came to visit me, I'm like,
I don't know if you're, you know,
some pawn being sent here to, like,
get information and go back or what.
And I just laid it out to him.
Like, "Listen, I'm here for the truth."
And we sit down,
and we have a conversation.
We started to pick apart
these changing stories from the platoon.
Well, this is what he said, and this is
what he said. And this is where he was.
I'm just like,
"Well, that's not what happened."
I know that he's not
shooting civilians in Iraq.
I was there each and every single day.
Never once during the course of that
deployment does any of these guys say,
"Eddie Gallagher
purposely killed a civilian today."
Get ready, Eddie.
He just poked his bean out.
That never took place.
And believe me, if it ever did,
it would have been confronted right there
by multiple people, myself included,
especially considering Eddie Gallagher
was not... not well-liked by anyone.
Gio pretty much laid it all out for me.
He just said that he was hanging out
with the accusers.
And was like, they were coming up
with a story to come after me.
I was relieved that somebody else
saw what was going on, like,
saw the little mutiny that was formed
and how out of control it had gotten.
A lot of these guys
started this deployment worshipping Eddie.
And I think that
when the realities of combat and the...
No more coddling and training.
I think when some of that fell away,
a lot of those guys were disappointed.
This guy pushed them to the limit.
Once we're set, have them
pull up to their positions again.
See if we can see who's fucking shooting.
- Then get at 'em.
- Yeah.
So Eddie's now
the easiest brunt for everyone's anger.
You know, maybe he just didn't give them
enough love.
The most asinine patrol I have ever done.
Fucking stupid.
Some of these men were my brothers,
to the point they're my best friends
and I loved them.
And now, I have to say,
"You know what, man?"
Like, no, that didn't happen,
and you're making it up.
"And I fucking hate Eddie,
but what you're doing is lying."
Gio was really informative for me.
I'd spent a couple of hours
on the phone with him.
And it was so relieving
to talk to somebody
who was in that platoon.
He was like, "I don't know why everyone
keeps forgetting that I was right there,
but I'm gonna testify
that Eddie did not do this."
I always knew that, yes,
the government owned my husband.
But I was always like,
I'm not a Navy SEAL.
I'm not owned by the government.
And I was not gonna sit back
and just let them railroad us.
And now, I had to fight for my husband
because he could not fight for himself.
I would literally just pour myself,
like, a massive glass of bourbon
and say, "Okay, what can I do?"
I had been in politics before.
For the first four or five weeks, I went
to The Hill virtually every other day,
and the ask was always,
just let him out of the brig
so that he can... he can properly prepare
and meet with his attorneys.
I went to the Democrats
because I've worked for
five democratic members of Congress.
I was like,
I am not asking for favoritism.
I'm just asking for fairness.
But there was always
this prevailing sentiment that,
"Hey, buddy. You're fucked."
Like, "Sorry."
While my brother-in-law, Sean,
was standing on Capitol Hill
each and every day,
I realized that I had to help my husband
in the only way I knew how.
Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Gallagher.
I am the founder
of The Better Business Babe.
The Better Business Babe supports women
through consulting, coaching,
and then
full-scale brand evolution process.
And we're gonna be sharing with you
an introduction workshop on branding.
I knew that I could apply my background
in consulting and branding.
I built a brand. It was called Free Eddie.
Hi, everyone. My name is Andrea Gallagher.
I'm Eddie's wife.
Um, I am kind of reaching out to you
for your help.
And so the Free Eddie campaign became,
like, a thing.
Hi, many of you have heard about
the ongoing struggle of our family
due to the treatment
that the Navy has been inflicting
on my husband, Eddie Gallagher.
I mean, I had never done media.
I had never been on TV.
But I felt like
it was part of what was necessary
to give a voice to what was going on.
We're lucky enough
to have found Mrs. Gallagher.
She joins us now on The Savage Nation.
And tell us, what are the allegations
against your husband?
So, my husband
is facing life without parole.
What?
So, they got low-life lawyers in the Navy
who have nothing better to do
than persecute our warriors.
This is crazy.
It started really small.
I said yes to everything.
And I had no fucking clue
what I was getting myself into,
but it was a wacky world,
and it started with
super conservative radio.
I cannot believe
that they are putting a hero,
a 19-year veteran, in cuffs.
This is outrageous.
These guys are even madder than I am.
They'd turn to me, and I was like,
"Yeah, this is a clear injustice."
And they would take it and run with it.
It's always good to hear
the same sentiment
shared by folks who can see, kind of,
the absurdity of the situation.
Oh, my God. Let me tell ya,
this is freakin' unbelievable.
That's when the kind of,
like, the perception shift,
in my mind, started to happen.
We were seen then, at that...
That demarcation point,
as a conservative cause.
I will not stay quiet.
They can lo...
Good for you.
And I won't stay quiet either.
You're not gonna believe what kind of
money and help you're gonna get
from the outraged Americans
who do support our warriors
and are sick and tired
of these kind of persecutions.
Thank you.
When I first read about
Eddie's case, they didn't have a strategy.
Andrea had been consulting
with my former client Bernie Kerik.
He was a former police commissioner
of the city of New York,
and he called me up, and he said,
you know, Andrea and Eddie,
you know, they wanted to talk to me.
Then I spoke with them on the phone,
and they made a decision.
They trusted me
to be able to handle this case which,
when you're fighting for your life,
you need to be with somebody
that you can trust.
Tim Parlatore came
and visited me in the brig.
Definitely not what I was expecting
at all.
What impressed me about Tim is
he was prior service.
He was a Navy officer,
and after talking to him,
I was... I... I felt comfortable.
When I met with Eddie,
one of the questions I asked him was,
"What do you think is the single most
damaging piece of evidence against you?
What is the biggest hill
that I need to climb over?"
He looked at me, and he said,
"It's the text messages."
"Funny story along with this one.
Got him with my hunting knife."
Sure... Sure looks like a confession.
But if you zoom in on that photo,
you're gonna see
that the knife is completely clean.
There's no blood on it.
And this is not the arm, uh,
and knife of somebody who stabbed them.
The case was essentially
a cold murder case. There was no body.
There was only eyewitness accounts.
So, the evidence was going to
really come down to
witness testimony and photographs
and video at the scene.
One of the big things
that we saw with these younger SEALs
was that they were afraid of the mission
that they had been given.
And so,
rather than power through the mission,
or find a way to appropriately respond,
they instead blamed Eddie.
The generational gap between,
you know, the old-school warriors
of Eddie Gallagher's generation
and the younger kids in this platoon
was a decade.
He was on his eighth deployment,
and everybody else in the platoon
was on their max third deployment.
For the vast majority of them,
the first time
that they had ever actually been shot at
was when they showed up in Mosul.
You have one guy
that is a 9/11 conflict era guy,
and then you had the generation
that doesn't really grow up
with it hanging over their head.
It's been euphemized as millennials.
The egos almost made it seem like
we were on a Real World episode.
As a Marine who's been in combat
and other theaters of war,
I really believe that there was
a run of cowardice in that platoon.
If you get branded as a coward by somebody
that's very well-respected, that's it.
Reputation is everything with us.
A lot of these
more millennial mindset SEALs,
they're used to just playing video games
and just hanging out.
They didn't want to go out to battle.
They didn't want to be put in danger.
They didn't sign up to do the work.
They signed up to get the accolades,
to wear the Trident.
And he called them out for cowardice.
My brother had an incident with them
where he called them cowards in combat,
and in the Navy SEALs,
that's a career killer.
Calling a Navy SEAL a pussy or a coward
is probably the worst thing
you can call them
if you're a Navy SEAL
calling another Navy SEAL that.
But if a government lobbyist
that's never served a day overseas
calls me a pussy or a coward
like Sean Gallagher did,
I mean, that's just really silly.
This was all a slanderous smear campaign
by millennial SEALs that set him up
because they knew they were gonna
have to be back under him again,
and there's three…
This narrative that
we were a bunch of entitled millennials
that had never seen combat,
that we didn't want to operate
the way things were supposed to go.
It's, like, no, Eddie.
We wanted to go kill ISIS
just as bad as you did.
We just wanted to do everything we could
to make sure everyone came home.
It was to be expected
that Andrea and Eddie's brother
would try and paint us
in a negative light.
But the more surprising thing
was when networks like Fox News
that pride themselves
on being supporting of the military
are sitting here
calling SEALs cowards and liars.
On the one hand, you've got the claim
that people lack the courage
to do what was necessary
in the heat of battle.
On the other hand, it was
that they were involved in this plot
to fabricate lies against Eddie.
And neither one of those
could be further from the truth.
Um, you know, the fact that those stories
got so much traction on that basis
was very shocking and surprising.
We have thousands and thousands
of text thread pages with them on, like,
Signal or WhatsApp
where they started a group.
And the group specifically was formulated
to target Eddie.
And what's interesting about this
is that if you look through
every single thing on that group
and all that's being said,
not once did they mention an ISIS fighter.
Not once did they mention
Eddie killing someone.
It's all these petty complaints.
They brought up
the petty things, like, you know
he stole stuff out of the care packages.
He stole my sunglasses.
And I just said, "Well",
just decompress. Take some time.
Either there's a criminal act
or there isn't.
"And if there isn't,
you need to let it go."
Every single one of their complaints
kept getting shot down by the command.
And since they weren't getting
what they wanted,
they just kept escalating.
What you're telling me is
that he put you guys in danger.
He stole some fucking PowerBars.
So I need more, like,
what is it that's bothering you guys?
And that's when,
uh, they brought up
the fact that there was
some rules of armed conflict,
armed conflict broken.
Thereafter, for the very first time,
roughly probably seven and a half months
after they came home,
was the first time ever that
these guys uttered the words "war crimes."
He committed a war crime.
That text thread wasn't designed
to report war crimes.
That text message thread was
a group of dudes who were BS-ing.
And where the real reporting happened
was in an investigation room
with an NCIS agent.
Earlier you mentioned
the person was stabbed in the neck.
You guys had that meeting that night
and you said somebody brought up
the term "war crimes."
- Right?
- Mm-hmm.
Is there any doubt in your mind
that these are war crimes?
No.
The leadership, they were like,
"Yeah, you can come, you know...
I have an open door policy.
You can come and bring anything."
But then when, uh, you know,
war crimes allegations land on their desk,
all of a sudden everyone wants
to plug their ears
and act like they didn't hear it.
Uh, any idea of around when this
conversation might have happened?
Christmas, Christmas time frame.
So the 6th of April was the first time
any allegations were brought
to your attention regarding
Gallagher allegedly stabbing the prisoner.
Correct.
As soon as the accusations
reached the level of NCIS investigation,
everyone was covering their tail
from the top down
because there were tons of people
who heard these allegations
within a week of us getting home
and didn't report it
through official channels.
There was no evolution of…
This started with cookie butter
and ended in war crimes.
It... It stemmed from war crimes.
It started at war crimes,
and it was war crimes the entire way.
It's common knowledge
within the Navy that.
Naval Special Warfare
is a very tight-knit group,
and that creates challenges
for anyone investigating a case like this.
I am not aware of another case where, um,
so many members of a SEAL platoon
came forward, uh,
to cooperate with the government.
I've covered the military as a journalist,
but also I've been a part of
the military and veteran community
for a very long time.
This never happens.
A group of Navy SEALs, a tight-knit
elite platoon of Special Operators,
doesn't just turn on their chief
and turn them in for war crimes.
It just doesn't happen.
When the case started,
I was a national correspondent
for The New York Times,
and my job was to cover
the military and veterans.
The head of the Navy SEALs
is reviewing allegations of war crimes
and drug abuse within the elite force.
For more than a year
before Gallagher's case hit the media,
there were, uh, all sorts of...
Of high-profile incidences.
How prevalent is drug abuse
in the SEAL teams?
People that we know of,
that we hear about,
have tested positive for cocaine,
methamphetamine, heroin. That's a problem.
A lot of stuff was causing
real concern to the SEAL brass.
NCIS and the prosecution team
had articulated out loud
that it would have been good
to "score a win."
Use Ed's case as a way of proving
that America is above this.
This is an example of bad,
and us prosecuting it is us being good.
So, we said, "Fuck it.
We're gonna fight this narrative."
Ed's a good and decent man,
a loving father, a dedicated husband.
He's a tremendous soldier.
Andrea and Sean Gallagher,
they were just driving this narrative,
all this publicity,
"he's a victim," and all this crap.
And, you know, the problem was
when it started drumming up all this,
uh, negative attention
from the rest of the community
focused on us.
We had United States Navy SEALs
going on social media and saying that
they were gonna come after
our families and our kids and our parents.
Once the investigation was launched,
it just spread through the teams
like wildfire.
Immediately, members in the community
were seeking out where we lived,
floating what I call,
you know, soft death threats.
And it became apparent that
once you turn in a pirate,
like, you're kicked off the pirate ship.
A fundraiser is being held in Escondido
to support
Navy SEAL chief Eddie Gallagher.
Joining us this morning
to talk about the fundraiser
is Eddie Gallagher's wife,
Andrea Gallagher.
- Andrea, great to see you again.
- Good to see you. Thanks, Jason.
Okay, lots of people supporting Eddie.
There is. We're so thankful for that.
So this, uh, fundraiser tomorrow
is in Escondido.
Um, it's from noon to about eight o'clock.
We'll have barbecue, a silent auction…
Andrea was marching everybody
to the beat of the same drum.
Eddie first, everything else second.
What are we doing to impact the situation?
For $50, you can actually have
a hand-rolled cigar, two drink tickets.
It will also be a time to interact
and find out the truth
about what's going on.
A lot of our coordination was fundraising.
We knew that getting enough money
for the legal team was the top priority.
The expenses just to defend Eddie
at a baseline were half a million dollars.
Sean and I,
through this grassroots campaign
raised over $750,000
for the defense of Eddie.
We started to really tip the scales
of getting more people
that were invested and involved in
trying to fight and advocate for Eddie.
They will never do this to another
military service member ever again
because they'll know that
we'll come for them.
Long live the real brotherhood
and free Eddie!
Andrea Gallagher led one of the most
successful social media campaigns
I have ever seen.
We want to see justice be served,
and we want to see Eddie go free
to be able to defend himself properly.
She was in the hundreds of thousands
of people seeing her posts,
watching her videos,
and the government didn't have
that ability.
If we are complicit to injustice,
it is a travesty to this nation,
and we should not stand for it. So I…
Leading up to the trial, the judge imposed
a gag order on all witnesses
that forbid you from talking to any media.
So, essentially, one side is allowed
to put out information,
you know, slanted to their benefit.
Yet, you know, people
on the other side are barred
from even defending themselves
against even personal attacks.
When it comes to this case
being played out
in the social media forum,
in the public forum,
Navy, our policy is we do not speak
about ongoing investigations or cases.
That is our procedure.
So, it was like fighting Mike Tyson
with both arms tied behind your back.
Um, we... we couldn't refute anything.
So, it was unfortunate that
a few of the underlings,
disgruntled because they were criticized
for not being combat-ready,
fabricated stories…
There was a sense that
we were building momentum.
But that is not enough
to build the case publicly.
And so my whole thing was, like,
what can we do?
Eddie is in jail.
Like, we need to get him out.
He's got two fighters on the outside
making sure he gets out soon…
- Absolutely.
- …and hopefully one in the White House.
- Thanks, Brian.
- We really appreciate it. Thank you.
We had been told, repeatedly, that
if you get on Fox,
particularly Fox and Friends,
you know, the president,
as everybody knows, might be watching,
and you can reach him that way.
So I'm... Strategically that was
what we were always trying to do.
Sean Gallagher joins us now
to go to bat for his brother.
Uh, Sean, it's the battlefield.
Isn't the goal to kill ISIS?
Precisely. That is precisely
what we've been saying.
And this entire system is broken.
That's why we're calling on the president
of the United States to fix it.
I was on at 7:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m.
and I think at like 9:00,
I open up Twitter,
and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh.
There's Donald Trump's tweet."
The fact that I was able
to reach the leader of the free world
by going on a morning news show
seems fucking crazy,
but it allowed a nobody to speak
to the most powerful person ever
and to get a... a reaction.
I was out in Monterey,
California, at the Naval postgrad school
at 4:00 a.m. in the morning,
and you get the phone call that, uh,
you kind of hope you never get,
which was, uh, "Hold for the White House."
And, uh, the president got on the line.
I was expecting his chief of staff,
but the president got on the line
and said, "This Gallagher case," uh...
"You can't have him
in solitary confinement."
So, I said, "Mr. President, you understand
that he's not in solitary confinement."
Which the president
didn't really wanna hear.
"Richard, get him out."
And that was the end of the phone call.
I was marching to lunch that day.
One of the guards, a female guard,
was, like, looking at me.
And, you know, I sort of glanced over,
and she was like, "Are you leaving today?"
And I was like, "I don't know, am I?"
And she was like, "Well,
the president just tweeted about you,
and it's on the news."
President Trump
has stepped in for Gallagher,
directing the Navy to move him
from the brig to the barracks.
Up until that point,
I was supportive of the president,
and, uh, I voted for him.
But when I saw that
he supported Eddie Gallagher,
I was extremely, extremely disappointed.
At that point, it was really, like, "Wow.
We are, uh... we're the underdogs here."
When Trump tweeted Eddie's name
for the first time,
um, it was just a total,
you know, rocking of my world
that the most powerful man
in the world just tweeted the name
of a psychopathic war criminal
in a positive light.
The president has said
this is unconstitutional.
He needs to have a right
to defend himself.
This is finally happening.
So it was a huge high for our family.
The goal was get him out
so he can properly prepare.
Just get my brother out of prison.
That was it.
But, we would learn that
it wouldn't exactly work out that way.
We started working on
seeing if we could move Chief Gallagher
to some other position
but yet keep him
in some sort of confinement,
so we knew where he was,
and he wasn't threatening witnesses.
The president had got involved
and tweeted and released me,
so I was out of the brig.
But only to be thrown…
…or put into a barracks room
with a crazy list of restrictions to where
I might as well still been in a cell.
I'm innocent. I love you.
- I love you. Bye, sweetheart.
- Yeah. All right.
All right. I'll see you, babe.
- Free Eddie.
- See you guys.
We're just still crying out here.
Um, president tweeted and intervened
and told the secretary of the Navy
on the 30th of March, and, uh,
it's the end of April, everybody.
So, um, we're still dealing
with this crap.
We appreciate your support
and just want you to know that
today marks the 30-day mark
until we get to this trial.
I was pretty nervous
because I still wasn't able
to communicate with my lawyers.
Tim did what he could.
I had no idea who Marc Mukasey was
at the time.
Tim said, "Hey, he's one
of the president's lawyers,"
so, I was like, "That means he's good,"
you know. He knows his shit.
In April of 2019, I get hooked up
with the defense team.
This was the ultimate trial.
I didn't give a goddamn
about who supported him and who didn't.
I wanted to try the case.
I'm meeting with Tim.
I'm reading about the case.
I'm re... learning the case.
And just to be courteous, I sent an email
to the lead prosecutor at the time
and I said, "My name's Marc Mukasey.
I'm joining the defense team.
Look forward to working with you."
Three seconds later
I got back an email that said,
"Marc, nice to meet you.
Look forward to working with you too."
It turns out, the email that he sent to me
had a tracking device on it.
In the days before the trial,
there were a number of leaks,
most of which went to the Navy Times.
And the Navy was clearly upset
by the leaks that were happening.
NCIS wanted to see if they could
discover who was leaking these materials.
All they asked me to do was allow them
to put the code in my email and send it.
They put into the bottom
of the email signature block
of Commander Chris Czaplak
the logo of the office where he worked,
but embedded in the image
was some sort of, uh, beacon.
That technology would tell the Navy
whether this email was being forwarded on
to other people that shouldn't have it.
This was not
an invasion of, uh... of data.
This was just a locating device
that NCIS uses in military situations
to catch people trying
to exfiltrate information.
We were just looking for the IP address
of where these emails were going
to find out where there was a leak.
If there's two groups of people that
you shouldn't be trying to spy on
without a warrant,
it's attorneys and members of the media
'cause they're going to be rightly upset.
And that's exactly what happened.
They used intelligence assets
to target defense attorneys.
I expect that there should be
congressional investigations on this.
I think that there should be indictments.
I think that certain NCIS agents
should be taken out in cuffs.
But if it had happened in
a federal criminal court, civilian court,
I... I think the prosecutors
would have gone to jail.
And now we find out, uh,
that there's malware that shows that
the prosecution was spying on you.
We're less than two weeks away
from the jury trial,
and this type of prosecutorial misconduct,
the entire prosecutorial team
should be taken off the case.
We need to know
what the judge knew and when.
- Right.
- And, quite frankly,
the whole thing should be dismissed.
The fallout from the email step
happened almost immediately.
Ultimately, the judge disqualified me
from further participation.
In hindsight, the risk was not worth...
Was not worth it.
The new prosecutor
had maybe two weeks
to get up to speed on
thousands of pages of discovery
and all the hours of witness testimony,
and then prepare to try the case.
The most experienced prosecutor
in the Navy on the West Coast,
the guy who has headed this case
since day one, is out.
Boom. Right before trial, poof, he's gone.
And Eddie gets out of confinement.
A military judge ordering
the release of Eddie Gallagher
just days before his trial,
saying prosecutors violated
his right to a fair trial
when they tracked emails
between him and his defense team.
I almost didn't believe it
when he said it.
I was sort of like, "What?"
And… …Andrea got up
and started screaming in the courtroom.
Um, like crying screaming.
Obviously we're thrilled at the action
that Judge Rugh took yesterday.
I mean, having my husband
to be actually treated like a...
A person that's innocent
until proven guilty is a good change.
I still had life in prison
hanging over my head.
You know, the black cloud was still there.
So after I was released
from, um, confinement,
it was game on until the trial.
Like, we were prepping for war.
Things started to change because Eddie
had representation from Trump's lawyers.
He had Trump's ears and eyes
with all their Fox News media campaign.
And when people in the platoon
began to think that
they were possibly
in legal trouble themselves,
and they would be held liable if they knew
about something but didn't report it,
it became a protect-yourself scenario.
And, unfortunately,
the truth gets pushed to the wayside
when people start trying
to protect themselves.
Just before the trial,
you had a whole platoon of United States
Navy SEALs ready to take the stand
a-and say what Eddie had done.
I mean, from our perspective,
everyone was on board,
and then suddenly
these articles start coming out
where there's some Navy SEALs in the
platoon that are defending his actions.
What?
The initial understanding that I had
was that the platoon was pretty unanimous
about, you know, the things that they saw
should be, you know, brought forward.
But that seemed to change
the closer we got to the trial.
The trial of a Navy SEAL
accused of war crimes
will get underway tomorrow.
Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher
has pleaded not guilty to…
Tim was gonna give
the opening statement.
You know, we practiced it in the hotel.
And his first opening statement
was about the history of the Navy,
and it was eloquent and poetic
and beautiful.
I said, "Tim, we're talking about Eddie
Gallagher and a murder case here, right?"
You just made beautiful love
to that opening.
"Don't make love to the opening statement.
Fuck it."
We weren't going to work in this case,
we were going to war.
Going into the trial,
it was like, finally.
Finally I get to get in the ring.
On trial for war crimes,
today, Special Operations Chief
Edward Gallagher stands charged
with murdering a wounded ISIS fighter
and with shooting two unarmed civilians.
You know, we'd been
working up to it for so long
that I think I was just
in, like, fight mode.
Opening statements
are expected Tuesday afternoon
in the murder trial of
Navy SEAL Chief Edward Gallagher.
I was just, like, tethered to my faith.
Like, this is gonna work out.
Like, yes, this is bad.
Yes, this is horrible, but it'll be okay.
Gallagher has pleaded
not guilty to all charges
and, if convicted of murder,
he could face life in prison.
Eddie's been slandering me
in the media
for the past I don't know how many months.
And now you're coming after me.
You own the media right now.
I have a gag order. Yeah, but guess what?
There's no gag order on the stand.
I believe the Navy had
a pretty strong case
with all the evidence that was there.
We had the threatening texts,
we had the photographs
and their testimonies.
I mean, those were pretty strong evidence.
So, you have
three eyewitnesses to a stabbing,
a photo of Eddie with the body,
with what seemed to be wounds consistent
to what the witnesses were describing,
and the accused person texts
a photo of himself
with the murder weapon
and the victim to one of his friends,
saying "Got him with my hunting knife."
I mean, if you can't work with that,
what are you gonna do, right?
Walking into the courtroom,
that was the first time that I'd been
face-to-face with Eddie since all of this,
and, you know, I...
I made eye contact with him,
and, you know, he mean-mugged me.
He gave me a stare down.
And, you know, it was clear
that there was some serious animosity.
The jury was made up
primarily of marine combat veterans.
They were senior enlisted leaders.
They didn't know Eddie Gallagher,
but the jurors could look over at him
and understand what he had been through
just by looking at his ribbons and medals.
I felt a great responsibility
to represent well
and serve some sort of justice
for these victims.
And, you know,
that weight on my shoulders was heavy.
Early on, the prosecution feels
like it's doing okay.
It seems to be unfolding about as planned.
But I don't think they were prepared for,
uh, the quality of cross-examination
that Tim Parlatore gave.
There's just these tiny nuances
that he would try and pick out,
and get you with this,
"Well, how do you know?
Did you watch him pull the trigger?"
While I'm looking through my scope,
I can't be watching
Eddie pull the trigger.
And I... In that exact moment, I'm like,
"Wow, he just..." You know, he got me.
Dille seemed convincing.
He seemed, to me, very credible.
He didn't stutter around, or...
He didn't have any lapses of memory.
He spoke well.
But once it got turned over
to the defense side,
it was a completely different story.
The only thing
that holds up is the truth,
and that's what I was trying to say.
And the truth is also not perfect.
If I were to make up a story,
there would be a lot more elements
that were certain.
But, uh, I had seen Eddie target
so many unjust targets
that I knew no one else
would've taken that shot.
I'd never been
inside of a courtroom.
And, like, I... This was not my world.
And to be in that courtroom
was a different experience.
But guess what?
I'm gonna go up on the stand,
I'm gonna tell them exactly what I saw,
and what happened.
Every little minute detail
was getting picked apart.
And, um...
Yeah, it was extremely frustrating
because every single witness
has a slightly different story
from their vantage point.
But Parlatore was doing his best
to try and pick apart my story.
The thing about my story is,
it's the truth.
It was at that point I'm just like,
"Wow, this is a complete show."
It was really remarkable to see these
SEALs for the first time up on the stand.
They just seemed like…
…someone had gut punched them.
Parlatore was able to suggest that maybe
things weren't what the SEALs were saying,
or maybe what the SEALs were saying
you couldn't trust.
But, for Parlatore,
there was still the problem of the photo.
The charge related
to the death of the terrorist
was the only one that carried
a mandatory minimum of life.
So that was really the one thing
that, you know, if...
Even if you win everything else,
if you lose the murder count,
no matter what brilliant argument
I come up with,
he's still going away for life.
Uh, so that was...
That was certainly the wolf that was
the closest to the henhouse for us.
And what the prosecution was counting on
was two witnesses,
Craig Miller and Corey Scott.
Miller started off pretty well,
you know, explaining what he saw,
explaining what happened.
And he was not emotional
as he was in the NCIS briefing.
So it was very sober.
But when he was
under cross-examination, he…
There's no other way to put it.
He fell apart.
The defense used
all these manipulation techniques
that aren't aimed at finding the truth.
They're aimed at one person's benefit.
And it... the truth gets thrown
out the window.
Miller's testimony was
a real setback for the prosecution.
Craig Miller was the SEAL
who was gonna really kick-start the case
about the stabbing of the ISIS fighter,
and he didn't do it.
What did we learn
about Chief Miller today?
What we learned about Chief Miller
is that when you're not telling the truth,
you can't remember anything
to keep your story straight.
After the first couple of days of trial,
we felt pretty confident
because their evidence mostly consisted
of eyewitness testimony,
and so far all of that eyewitness
testimony fell completely flat.
So, at that point,
while certainly nothing is guaranteed,
it certainly felt like, you know,
we were well ahead.
Every day in trial
was such a saga of like...
It was more like My Cousin Vinny
half the time than it was like Tom Cruise.
It was... It was comical
how bad the prosecution was.
It was comical how much the guys could not
keep up with their lies on the stand.
This entire case was built
on just a small core group of people
that had personal animosity
towards Eddie Gallagher.
They told stories that just couldn't...
Couldn't hold up.
I mean, they were like storybook
about, like, tactical, just assault on BS.
And so by the time
they had given their testimony
and by the time
that they had gotten to trial,
they had told so many lies
that I think it was pretty much impossible
to keep up with.
So, that day when Corey Scott testified,
we really didn't know
what he was going to say.
Good morning.
This is probably gonna be
the pivotal day of the trial
because the medic, Corey Scott,
is going to testify.
- Go, go get him. We got him.
- What's going on?
And he's important
because he was closer to the stabbing.
He saw it from maybe a foot away.
And he not only saw the stabbing happen,
but stayed there until the captive died.
So he can actually say,
as a medical expert,
"Yes, this person died from those wounds."
And that was gonna be…
An earthquake for Eddie.
Like, how do you survive that?
The prosecution,
you could get a sense of individuals
that they were worried about.
You had some indication
that there was wild cards,
and that there were things that, um...
Potential surprises.
As the morning started,
this really weird thing happened.
Eddie had brought his kids
to the courtroom.
I actually leaned over
to the reporter for the AP and asked,
"Why would you bring your kids
to the trial on the day
when you know
Corey Scott's gonna testify?"
I mean, here's the guy who's gonna say,
"I saw your dad stab this guy in the neck
multiple times and then this guy died."
And the reporter for the AP is like,
"Something's up."
I went in that day thinking that
I didn't know what, really,
he was gonna say,
but I did...
When I walked in that day,
Corey was there,
and he had come up, and we shook hands.
And he just looked at me and was like,
"Everything's gonna be fine."
When Corey Scott was on the stand,
I was just trying to remain,
like, calm, stone c...
I would just not make
any facial expression.
Um…
…and I was more…
…interested to see, like,
what he was gonna say
on the stand under oath.
I can't recall verbatim
what he was saying.
All I know is when the prosecution asked
if I had stabbed him, he said, "Yeah."
To me, I was like, "What the fuck?"
Like, okay, obviously this guy is...
He's full of shit.
Asphyxiate is a very specific word.
The dictionary definition is,
"Someone who is deprived of oxygen."
So it doesn't mean
somebody had just stopped breathing.
And when he said
essentially he was deprived of oxygen,
and then he died,
that to me was very different
from "die from a loss of blood."
And why would he use that specific word?
I knew that that was not
just him misspeaking,
and he meant something else.
That... That meant something.
I'm standing at the podium,
and I'm kinda holding on to the podium
'cause I…
…I can't believe
that just happened.
I know it happens on TV a lot,
that somebody comes up
on the stand in the courtroom,
and there's surprise testimony,
and everyone in the courtroom goes…
But that is exactly what happened.
Corey Scott threw such a bomb.
His testimony completely
upended everything.
I think everyone in the courtroom
was like, "Okay, what now?"
Like, it's a circus. It is a circus there.
And so all of the media runs out,
and we're sitting there like, "W... What?"
To me I was sort of like, a dude
just admitted to killing this fighter.
But at the same time, I was more stuck on,
"Why did he just...
Why did he still say I stabbed him?"
Why both answers?
So I was still just
sort of bewildered by it, like…
This isn't over at all.
operations chief, Edward Gallagher,
stabbed a 15-year-old
ISIS prisoner to death.
He's also accused of shooting
at Iraqi civilians on several occasions.
He'd been decorated
with a chest full of medals,
but today, Navy SEAL platoon leader,
Eddie Gallagher, wore shackles.
Prosecutors claim
Gallagher took a photo with the corpse
and sent it to friends
with messages such as,
"I got this one with my hunting knife."
This Navy SEAL, now charged
with premeditated murder.
I got arrested,
and they handcuffed me,
and then they brought me to the brig.
And I'm like, "There is a huge mistake
going on here," because... I don't know...
I didn't understand what reason
they had to throw me in prison.
I walked in,
these guards were staring at me,
and they even asked me, like,
"Do you know why you're here?"
And I was like, "No."
They were like, "Well, what do you think?"
And I said, "What, for killing ISIS?"
And they were like, "Yeah."
I said it as a joke,
but when they were like, "Yeah,"
I was like, "Okay…
…what the fuck?"
I hadn't been charged with anything.
I hadn't... Nothing was brought up to me.
At that point, I was in survival mode,
just trying to figure out,
how did this happen?
Why am I here?
How can I get out of here?
We're here to train and go to war.
I was like, "Hell yeah. Let's do this."
These men were my family, my brothers.
This bond of warfighters.
You could just tell
that something was off.
There was this undercurrent
in this platoon.
How do you sleep at night
knowing what you did?
I just saw it as good versus evil.
It's that simple.
This is a prepaid call from…
Eddie.
A prisoner
at the Naval Consolidated Brig at Miramar.
To accept this call, press five now.
- Hey, baby.
- Hi, Dad.
Hey.
- Hi, baby.
- What are you guys doing?
Oh, nothing.
I was gonna let Ryan answer it.
Hey, bud.
Hi.
- What are you up to?
- Nothing.
From when he got taken,
it was just a crash course
in how to save a life, basically.
There's no road map to guide you
when you're in a situation like this.
You don't know how to wade through it.
I wanted to, you know,
lay down on the floor and cry.
I was at the point of exhaustion
and couldn't go any further.
Imagine talking to a person
in the saddest, darkest place…
…and it is impossible to pull them out.
It's not as if, when he's on the phone
with me in the brig,
I can say, "Hey, cheer up, bucko."
And the accusations were serious.
Eddie's charge sheet was long
and it was harrowing.
It's that first thing you see that says,
"United States government v. Gallagher."
I'm like, "Fuck.
United States versus Gallagher. Fuck."
I was scared. They could send Eddie
to prison for the rest of his life.
This is not even a fog of war
judgment call kind of situation.
These are premeditated,
cold-blooded murders.
It gives everyone a bad name,
every veteran that served.
This guy was a serial killer
who was in the military
so he could do it in legal ways.
The most damning thing about it is it...
How rare is it for SEAL team members
to actually come out publicly?
When professional killers say
that someone's killing too much,
we should lean in and listen.
Eddie gets arrested,
and it hits the newswire right away.
Boom. Eddie Gallagher, arrested.
You know, they... they push the narrative
of this man was killing children,
women, old people, indiscriminately.
This man cut off
the head of an ISIS fighter.
I'm having my family hit me up,
sending me articles
about this guy that I know saying,
"Look at how horrible this is,"
not realizing that I was there,
not realizing that I'm in that photo.
I need to understand the reality
of, you know, what's going on here.
But I say, you know what?
I hate to do this,
but I need to go talk with Eddie.
This dude is on CNN as a war criminal,
and I'm going in there visiting him.
This isn't a good career choice.
This isn't a good thing to do other than
that it was the right thing to do.
I put on my dress uniform,
I went down there,
and I signed myself into the brig.
Gio came to visit me,
which I was surprised about.
I was very paranoid.
I played it cool, but I was like,
I don't trust anybody at this point.
If people came to visit me, I'm like,
I don't know if you're, you know,
some pawn being sent here to, like,
get information and go back or what.
And I just laid it out to him.
Like, "Listen, I'm here for the truth."
And we sit down,
and we have a conversation.
We started to pick apart
these changing stories from the platoon.
Well, this is what he said, and this is
what he said. And this is where he was.
I'm just like,
"Well, that's not what happened."
I know that he's not
shooting civilians in Iraq.
I was there each and every single day.
Never once during the course of that
deployment does any of these guys say,
"Eddie Gallagher
purposely killed a civilian today."
Get ready, Eddie.
He just poked his bean out.
That never took place.
And believe me, if it ever did,
it would have been confronted right there
by multiple people, myself included,
especially considering Eddie Gallagher
was not... not well-liked by anyone.
Gio pretty much laid it all out for me.
He just said that he was hanging out
with the accusers.
And was like, they were coming up
with a story to come after me.
I was relieved that somebody else
saw what was going on, like,
saw the little mutiny that was formed
and how out of control it had gotten.
A lot of these guys
started this deployment worshipping Eddie.
And I think that
when the realities of combat and the...
No more coddling and training.
I think when some of that fell away,
a lot of those guys were disappointed.
This guy pushed them to the limit.
Once we're set, have them
pull up to their positions again.
See if we can see who's fucking shooting.
- Then get at 'em.
- Yeah.
So Eddie's now
the easiest brunt for everyone's anger.
You know, maybe he just didn't give them
enough love.
The most asinine patrol I have ever done.
Fucking stupid.
Some of these men were my brothers,
to the point they're my best friends
and I loved them.
And now, I have to say,
"You know what, man?"
Like, no, that didn't happen,
and you're making it up.
"And I fucking hate Eddie,
but what you're doing is lying."
Gio was really informative for me.
I'd spent a couple of hours
on the phone with him.
And it was so relieving
to talk to somebody
who was in that platoon.
He was like, "I don't know why everyone
keeps forgetting that I was right there,
but I'm gonna testify
that Eddie did not do this."
I always knew that, yes,
the government owned my husband.
But I was always like,
I'm not a Navy SEAL.
I'm not owned by the government.
And I was not gonna sit back
and just let them railroad us.
And now, I had to fight for my husband
because he could not fight for himself.
I would literally just pour myself,
like, a massive glass of bourbon
and say, "Okay, what can I do?"
I had been in politics before.
For the first four or five weeks, I went
to The Hill virtually every other day,
and the ask was always,
just let him out of the brig
so that he can... he can properly prepare
and meet with his attorneys.
I went to the Democrats
because I've worked for
five democratic members of Congress.
I was like,
I am not asking for favoritism.
I'm just asking for fairness.
But there was always
this prevailing sentiment that,
"Hey, buddy. You're fucked."
Like, "Sorry."
While my brother-in-law, Sean,
was standing on Capitol Hill
each and every day,
I realized that I had to help my husband
in the only way I knew how.
Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Gallagher.
I am the founder
of The Better Business Babe.
The Better Business Babe supports women
through consulting, coaching,
and then
full-scale brand evolution process.
And we're gonna be sharing with you
an introduction workshop on branding.
I knew that I could apply my background
in consulting and branding.
I built a brand. It was called Free Eddie.
Hi, everyone. My name is Andrea Gallagher.
I'm Eddie's wife.
Um, I am kind of reaching out to you
for your help.
And so the Free Eddie campaign became,
like, a thing.
Hi, many of you have heard about
the ongoing struggle of our family
due to the treatment
that the Navy has been inflicting
on my husband, Eddie Gallagher.
I mean, I had never done media.
I had never been on TV.
But I felt like
it was part of what was necessary
to give a voice to what was going on.
We're lucky enough
to have found Mrs. Gallagher.
She joins us now on The Savage Nation.
And tell us, what are the allegations
against your husband?
So, my husband
is facing life without parole.
What?
So, they got low-life lawyers in the Navy
who have nothing better to do
than persecute our warriors.
This is crazy.
It started really small.
I said yes to everything.
And I had no fucking clue
what I was getting myself into,
but it was a wacky world,
and it started with
super conservative radio.
I cannot believe
that they are putting a hero,
a 19-year veteran, in cuffs.
This is outrageous.
These guys are even madder than I am.
They'd turn to me, and I was like,
"Yeah, this is a clear injustice."
And they would take it and run with it.
It's always good to hear
the same sentiment
shared by folks who can see, kind of,
the absurdity of the situation.
Oh, my God. Let me tell ya,
this is freakin' unbelievable.
That's when the kind of,
like, the perception shift,
in my mind, started to happen.
We were seen then, at that...
That demarcation point,
as a conservative cause.
I will not stay quiet.
They can lo...
Good for you.
And I won't stay quiet either.
You're not gonna believe what kind of
money and help you're gonna get
from the outraged Americans
who do support our warriors
and are sick and tired
of these kind of persecutions.
Thank you.
When I first read about
Eddie's case, they didn't have a strategy.
Andrea had been consulting
with my former client Bernie Kerik.
He was a former police commissioner
of the city of New York,
and he called me up, and he said,
you know, Andrea and Eddie,
you know, they wanted to talk to me.
Then I spoke with them on the phone,
and they made a decision.
They trusted me
to be able to handle this case which,
when you're fighting for your life,
you need to be with somebody
that you can trust.
Tim Parlatore came
and visited me in the brig.
Definitely not what I was expecting
at all.
What impressed me about Tim is
he was prior service.
He was a Navy officer,
and after talking to him,
I was... I... I felt comfortable.
When I met with Eddie,
one of the questions I asked him was,
"What do you think is the single most
damaging piece of evidence against you?
What is the biggest hill
that I need to climb over?"
He looked at me, and he said,
"It's the text messages."
"Funny story along with this one.
Got him with my hunting knife."
Sure... Sure looks like a confession.
But if you zoom in on that photo,
you're gonna see
that the knife is completely clean.
There's no blood on it.
And this is not the arm, uh,
and knife of somebody who stabbed them.
The case was essentially
a cold murder case. There was no body.
There was only eyewitness accounts.
So, the evidence was going to
really come down to
witness testimony and photographs
and video at the scene.
One of the big things
that we saw with these younger SEALs
was that they were afraid of the mission
that they had been given.
And so,
rather than power through the mission,
or find a way to appropriately respond,
they instead blamed Eddie.
The generational gap between,
you know, the old-school warriors
of Eddie Gallagher's generation
and the younger kids in this platoon
was a decade.
He was on his eighth deployment,
and everybody else in the platoon
was on their max third deployment.
For the vast majority of them,
the first time
that they had ever actually been shot at
was when they showed up in Mosul.
You have one guy
that is a 9/11 conflict era guy,
and then you had the generation
that doesn't really grow up
with it hanging over their head.
It's been euphemized as millennials.
The egos almost made it seem like
we were on a Real World episode.
As a Marine who's been in combat
and other theaters of war,
I really believe that there was
a run of cowardice in that platoon.
If you get branded as a coward by somebody
that's very well-respected, that's it.
Reputation is everything with us.
A lot of these
more millennial mindset SEALs,
they're used to just playing video games
and just hanging out.
They didn't want to go out to battle.
They didn't want to be put in danger.
They didn't sign up to do the work.
They signed up to get the accolades,
to wear the Trident.
And he called them out for cowardice.
My brother had an incident with them
where he called them cowards in combat,
and in the Navy SEALs,
that's a career killer.
Calling a Navy SEAL a pussy or a coward
is probably the worst thing
you can call them
if you're a Navy SEAL
calling another Navy SEAL that.
But if a government lobbyist
that's never served a day overseas
calls me a pussy or a coward
like Sean Gallagher did,
I mean, that's just really silly.
This was all a slanderous smear campaign
by millennial SEALs that set him up
because they knew they were gonna
have to be back under him again,
and there's three…
This narrative that
we were a bunch of entitled millennials
that had never seen combat,
that we didn't want to operate
the way things were supposed to go.
It's, like, no, Eddie.
We wanted to go kill ISIS
just as bad as you did.
We just wanted to do everything we could
to make sure everyone came home.
It was to be expected
that Andrea and Eddie's brother
would try and paint us
in a negative light.
But the more surprising thing
was when networks like Fox News
that pride themselves
on being supporting of the military
are sitting here
calling SEALs cowards and liars.
On the one hand, you've got the claim
that people lack the courage
to do what was necessary
in the heat of battle.
On the other hand, it was
that they were involved in this plot
to fabricate lies against Eddie.
And neither one of those
could be further from the truth.
Um, you know, the fact that those stories
got so much traction on that basis
was very shocking and surprising.
We have thousands and thousands
of text thread pages with them on, like,
Signal or WhatsApp
where they started a group.
And the group specifically was formulated
to target Eddie.
And what's interesting about this
is that if you look through
every single thing on that group
and all that's being said,
not once did they mention an ISIS fighter.
Not once did they mention
Eddie killing someone.
It's all these petty complaints.
They brought up
the petty things, like, you know
he stole stuff out of the care packages.
He stole my sunglasses.
And I just said, "Well",
just decompress. Take some time.
Either there's a criminal act
or there isn't.
"And if there isn't,
you need to let it go."
Every single one of their complaints
kept getting shot down by the command.
And since they weren't getting
what they wanted,
they just kept escalating.
What you're telling me is
that he put you guys in danger.
He stole some fucking PowerBars.
So I need more, like,
what is it that's bothering you guys?
And that's when,
uh, they brought up
the fact that there was
some rules of armed conflict,
armed conflict broken.
Thereafter, for the very first time,
roughly probably seven and a half months
after they came home,
was the first time ever that
these guys uttered the words "war crimes."
He committed a war crime.
That text thread wasn't designed
to report war crimes.
That text message thread was
a group of dudes who were BS-ing.
And where the real reporting happened
was in an investigation room
with an NCIS agent.
Earlier you mentioned
the person was stabbed in the neck.
You guys had that meeting that night
and you said somebody brought up
the term "war crimes."
- Right?
- Mm-hmm.
Is there any doubt in your mind
that these are war crimes?
No.
The leadership, they were like,
"Yeah, you can come, you know...
I have an open door policy.
You can come and bring anything."
But then when, uh, you know,
war crimes allegations land on their desk,
all of a sudden everyone wants
to plug their ears
and act like they didn't hear it.
Uh, any idea of around when this
conversation might have happened?
Christmas, Christmas time frame.
So the 6th of April was the first time
any allegations were brought
to your attention regarding
Gallagher allegedly stabbing the prisoner.
Correct.
As soon as the accusations
reached the level of NCIS investigation,
everyone was covering their tail
from the top down
because there were tons of people
who heard these allegations
within a week of us getting home
and didn't report it
through official channels.
There was no evolution of…
This started with cookie butter
and ended in war crimes.
It... It stemmed from war crimes.
It started at war crimes,
and it was war crimes the entire way.
It's common knowledge
within the Navy that.
Naval Special Warfare
is a very tight-knit group,
and that creates challenges
for anyone investigating a case like this.
I am not aware of another case where, um,
so many members of a SEAL platoon
came forward, uh,
to cooperate with the government.
I've covered the military as a journalist,
but also I've been a part of
the military and veteran community
for a very long time.
This never happens.
A group of Navy SEALs, a tight-knit
elite platoon of Special Operators,
doesn't just turn on their chief
and turn them in for war crimes.
It just doesn't happen.
When the case started,
I was a national correspondent
for The New York Times,
and my job was to cover
the military and veterans.
The head of the Navy SEALs
is reviewing allegations of war crimes
and drug abuse within the elite force.
For more than a year
before Gallagher's case hit the media,
there were, uh, all sorts of...
Of high-profile incidences.
How prevalent is drug abuse
in the SEAL teams?
People that we know of,
that we hear about,
have tested positive for cocaine,
methamphetamine, heroin. That's a problem.
A lot of stuff was causing
real concern to the SEAL brass.
NCIS and the prosecution team
had articulated out loud
that it would have been good
to "score a win."
Use Ed's case as a way of proving
that America is above this.
This is an example of bad,
and us prosecuting it is us being good.
So, we said, "Fuck it.
We're gonna fight this narrative."
Ed's a good and decent man,
a loving father, a dedicated husband.
He's a tremendous soldier.
Andrea and Sean Gallagher,
they were just driving this narrative,
all this publicity,
"he's a victim," and all this crap.
And, you know, the problem was
when it started drumming up all this,
uh, negative attention
from the rest of the community
focused on us.
We had United States Navy SEALs
going on social media and saying that
they were gonna come after
our families and our kids and our parents.
Once the investigation was launched,
it just spread through the teams
like wildfire.
Immediately, members in the community
were seeking out where we lived,
floating what I call,
you know, soft death threats.
And it became apparent that
once you turn in a pirate,
like, you're kicked off the pirate ship.
A fundraiser is being held in Escondido
to support
Navy SEAL chief Eddie Gallagher.
Joining us this morning
to talk about the fundraiser
is Eddie Gallagher's wife,
Andrea Gallagher.
- Andrea, great to see you again.
- Good to see you. Thanks, Jason.
Okay, lots of people supporting Eddie.
There is. We're so thankful for that.
So this, uh, fundraiser tomorrow
is in Escondido.
Um, it's from noon to about eight o'clock.
We'll have barbecue, a silent auction…
Andrea was marching everybody
to the beat of the same drum.
Eddie first, everything else second.
What are we doing to impact the situation?
For $50, you can actually have
a hand-rolled cigar, two drink tickets.
It will also be a time to interact
and find out the truth
about what's going on.
A lot of our coordination was fundraising.
We knew that getting enough money
for the legal team was the top priority.
The expenses just to defend Eddie
at a baseline were half a million dollars.
Sean and I,
through this grassroots campaign
raised over $750,000
for the defense of Eddie.
We started to really tip the scales
of getting more people
that were invested and involved in
trying to fight and advocate for Eddie.
They will never do this to another
military service member ever again
because they'll know that
we'll come for them.
Long live the real brotherhood
and free Eddie!
Andrea Gallagher led one of the most
successful social media campaigns
I have ever seen.
We want to see justice be served,
and we want to see Eddie go free
to be able to defend himself properly.
She was in the hundreds of thousands
of people seeing her posts,
watching her videos,
and the government didn't have
that ability.
If we are complicit to injustice,
it is a travesty to this nation,
and we should not stand for it. So I…
Leading up to the trial, the judge imposed
a gag order on all witnesses
that forbid you from talking to any media.
So, essentially, one side is allowed
to put out information,
you know, slanted to their benefit.
Yet, you know, people
on the other side are barred
from even defending themselves
against even personal attacks.
When it comes to this case
being played out
in the social media forum,
in the public forum,
Navy, our policy is we do not speak
about ongoing investigations or cases.
That is our procedure.
So, it was like fighting Mike Tyson
with both arms tied behind your back.
Um, we... we couldn't refute anything.
So, it was unfortunate that
a few of the underlings,
disgruntled because they were criticized
for not being combat-ready,
fabricated stories…
There was a sense that
we were building momentum.
But that is not enough
to build the case publicly.
And so my whole thing was, like,
what can we do?
Eddie is in jail.
Like, we need to get him out.
He's got two fighters on the outside
making sure he gets out soon…
- Absolutely.
- …and hopefully one in the White House.
- Thanks, Brian.
- We really appreciate it. Thank you.
We had been told, repeatedly, that
if you get on Fox,
particularly Fox and Friends,
you know, the president,
as everybody knows, might be watching,
and you can reach him that way.
So I'm... Strategically that was
what we were always trying to do.
Sean Gallagher joins us now
to go to bat for his brother.
Uh, Sean, it's the battlefield.
Isn't the goal to kill ISIS?
Precisely. That is precisely
what we've been saying.
And this entire system is broken.
That's why we're calling on the president
of the United States to fix it.
I was on at 7:30 a.m. or 7:00 a.m.
and I think at like 9:00,
I open up Twitter,
and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh.
There's Donald Trump's tweet."
The fact that I was able
to reach the leader of the free world
by going on a morning news show
seems fucking crazy,
but it allowed a nobody to speak
to the most powerful person ever
and to get a... a reaction.
I was out in Monterey,
California, at the Naval postgrad school
at 4:00 a.m. in the morning,
and you get the phone call that, uh,
you kind of hope you never get,
which was, uh, "Hold for the White House."
And, uh, the president got on the line.
I was expecting his chief of staff,
but the president got on the line
and said, "This Gallagher case," uh...
"You can't have him
in solitary confinement."
So, I said, "Mr. President, you understand
that he's not in solitary confinement."
Which the president
didn't really wanna hear.
"Richard, get him out."
And that was the end of the phone call.
I was marching to lunch that day.
One of the guards, a female guard,
was, like, looking at me.
And, you know, I sort of glanced over,
and she was like, "Are you leaving today?"
And I was like, "I don't know, am I?"
And she was like, "Well,
the president just tweeted about you,
and it's on the news."
President Trump
has stepped in for Gallagher,
directing the Navy to move him
from the brig to the barracks.
Up until that point,
I was supportive of the president,
and, uh, I voted for him.
But when I saw that
he supported Eddie Gallagher,
I was extremely, extremely disappointed.
At that point, it was really, like, "Wow.
We are, uh... we're the underdogs here."
When Trump tweeted Eddie's name
for the first time,
um, it was just a total,
you know, rocking of my world
that the most powerful man
in the world just tweeted the name
of a psychopathic war criminal
in a positive light.
The president has said
this is unconstitutional.
He needs to have a right
to defend himself.
This is finally happening.
So it was a huge high for our family.
The goal was get him out
so he can properly prepare.
Just get my brother out of prison.
That was it.
But, we would learn that
it wouldn't exactly work out that way.
We started working on
seeing if we could move Chief Gallagher
to some other position
but yet keep him
in some sort of confinement,
so we knew where he was,
and he wasn't threatening witnesses.
The president had got involved
and tweeted and released me,
so I was out of the brig.
But only to be thrown…
…or put into a barracks room
with a crazy list of restrictions to where
I might as well still been in a cell.
I'm innocent. I love you.
- I love you. Bye, sweetheart.
- Yeah. All right.
All right. I'll see you, babe.
- Free Eddie.
- See you guys.
We're just still crying out here.
Um, president tweeted and intervened
and told the secretary of the Navy
on the 30th of March, and, uh,
it's the end of April, everybody.
So, um, we're still dealing
with this crap.
We appreciate your support
and just want you to know that
today marks the 30-day mark
until we get to this trial.
I was pretty nervous
because I still wasn't able
to communicate with my lawyers.
Tim did what he could.
I had no idea who Marc Mukasey was
at the time.
Tim said, "Hey, he's one
of the president's lawyers,"
so, I was like, "That means he's good,"
you know. He knows his shit.
In April of 2019, I get hooked up
with the defense team.
This was the ultimate trial.
I didn't give a goddamn
about who supported him and who didn't.
I wanted to try the case.
I'm meeting with Tim.
I'm reading about the case.
I'm re... learning the case.
And just to be courteous, I sent an email
to the lead prosecutor at the time
and I said, "My name's Marc Mukasey.
I'm joining the defense team.
Look forward to working with you."
Three seconds later
I got back an email that said,
"Marc, nice to meet you.
Look forward to working with you too."
It turns out, the email that he sent to me
had a tracking device on it.
In the days before the trial,
there were a number of leaks,
most of which went to the Navy Times.
And the Navy was clearly upset
by the leaks that were happening.
NCIS wanted to see if they could
discover who was leaking these materials.
All they asked me to do was allow them
to put the code in my email and send it.
They put into the bottom
of the email signature block
of Commander Chris Czaplak
the logo of the office where he worked,
but embedded in the image
was some sort of, uh, beacon.
That technology would tell the Navy
whether this email was being forwarded on
to other people that shouldn't have it.
This was not
an invasion of, uh... of data.
This was just a locating device
that NCIS uses in military situations
to catch people trying
to exfiltrate information.
We were just looking for the IP address
of where these emails were going
to find out where there was a leak.
If there's two groups of people that
you shouldn't be trying to spy on
without a warrant,
it's attorneys and members of the media
'cause they're going to be rightly upset.
And that's exactly what happened.
They used intelligence assets
to target defense attorneys.
I expect that there should be
congressional investigations on this.
I think that there should be indictments.
I think that certain NCIS agents
should be taken out in cuffs.
But if it had happened in
a federal criminal court, civilian court,
I... I think the prosecutors
would have gone to jail.
And now we find out, uh,
that there's malware that shows that
the prosecution was spying on you.
We're less than two weeks away
from the jury trial,
and this type of prosecutorial misconduct,
the entire prosecutorial team
should be taken off the case.
We need to know
what the judge knew and when.
- Right.
- And, quite frankly,
the whole thing should be dismissed.
The fallout from the email step
happened almost immediately.
Ultimately, the judge disqualified me
from further participation.
In hindsight, the risk was not worth...
Was not worth it.
The new prosecutor
had maybe two weeks
to get up to speed on
thousands of pages of discovery
and all the hours of witness testimony,
and then prepare to try the case.
The most experienced prosecutor
in the Navy on the West Coast,
the guy who has headed this case
since day one, is out.
Boom. Right before trial, poof, he's gone.
And Eddie gets out of confinement.
A military judge ordering
the release of Eddie Gallagher
just days before his trial,
saying prosecutors violated
his right to a fair trial
when they tracked emails
between him and his defense team.
I almost didn't believe it
when he said it.
I was sort of like, "What?"
And… …Andrea got up
and started screaming in the courtroom.
Um, like crying screaming.
Obviously we're thrilled at the action
that Judge Rugh took yesterday.
I mean, having my husband
to be actually treated like a...
A person that's innocent
until proven guilty is a good change.
I still had life in prison
hanging over my head.
You know, the black cloud was still there.
So after I was released
from, um, confinement,
it was game on until the trial.
Like, we were prepping for war.
Things started to change because Eddie
had representation from Trump's lawyers.
He had Trump's ears and eyes
with all their Fox News media campaign.
And when people in the platoon
began to think that
they were possibly
in legal trouble themselves,
and they would be held liable if they knew
about something but didn't report it,
it became a protect-yourself scenario.
And, unfortunately,
the truth gets pushed to the wayside
when people start trying
to protect themselves.
Just before the trial,
you had a whole platoon of United States
Navy SEALs ready to take the stand
a-and say what Eddie had done.
I mean, from our perspective,
everyone was on board,
and then suddenly
these articles start coming out
where there's some Navy SEALs in the
platoon that are defending his actions.
What?
The initial understanding that I had
was that the platoon was pretty unanimous
about, you know, the things that they saw
should be, you know, brought forward.
But that seemed to change
the closer we got to the trial.
The trial of a Navy SEAL
accused of war crimes
will get underway tomorrow.
Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher
has pleaded not guilty to…
Tim was gonna give
the opening statement.
You know, we practiced it in the hotel.
And his first opening statement
was about the history of the Navy,
and it was eloquent and poetic
and beautiful.
I said, "Tim, we're talking about Eddie
Gallagher and a murder case here, right?"
You just made beautiful love
to that opening.
"Don't make love to the opening statement.
Fuck it."
We weren't going to work in this case,
we were going to war.
Going into the trial,
it was like, finally.
Finally I get to get in the ring.
On trial for war crimes,
today, Special Operations Chief
Edward Gallagher stands charged
with murdering a wounded ISIS fighter
and with shooting two unarmed civilians.
You know, we'd been
working up to it for so long
that I think I was just
in, like, fight mode.
Opening statements
are expected Tuesday afternoon
in the murder trial of
Navy SEAL Chief Edward Gallagher.
I was just, like, tethered to my faith.
Like, this is gonna work out.
Like, yes, this is bad.
Yes, this is horrible, but it'll be okay.
Gallagher has pleaded
not guilty to all charges
and, if convicted of murder,
he could face life in prison.
Eddie's been slandering me
in the media
for the past I don't know how many months.
And now you're coming after me.
You own the media right now.
I have a gag order. Yeah, but guess what?
There's no gag order on the stand.
I believe the Navy had
a pretty strong case
with all the evidence that was there.
We had the threatening texts,
we had the photographs
and their testimonies.
I mean, those were pretty strong evidence.
So, you have
three eyewitnesses to a stabbing,
a photo of Eddie with the body,
with what seemed to be wounds consistent
to what the witnesses were describing,
and the accused person texts
a photo of himself
with the murder weapon
and the victim to one of his friends,
saying "Got him with my hunting knife."
I mean, if you can't work with that,
what are you gonna do, right?
Walking into the courtroom,
that was the first time that I'd been
face-to-face with Eddie since all of this,
and, you know, I...
I made eye contact with him,
and, you know, he mean-mugged me.
He gave me a stare down.
And, you know, it was clear
that there was some serious animosity.
The jury was made up
primarily of marine combat veterans.
They were senior enlisted leaders.
They didn't know Eddie Gallagher,
but the jurors could look over at him
and understand what he had been through
just by looking at his ribbons and medals.
I felt a great responsibility
to represent well
and serve some sort of justice
for these victims.
And, you know,
that weight on my shoulders was heavy.
Early on, the prosecution feels
like it's doing okay.
It seems to be unfolding about as planned.
But I don't think they were prepared for,
uh, the quality of cross-examination
that Tim Parlatore gave.
There's just these tiny nuances
that he would try and pick out,
and get you with this,
"Well, how do you know?
Did you watch him pull the trigger?"
While I'm looking through my scope,
I can't be watching
Eddie pull the trigger.
And I... In that exact moment, I'm like,
"Wow, he just..." You know, he got me.
Dille seemed convincing.
He seemed, to me, very credible.
He didn't stutter around, or...
He didn't have any lapses of memory.
He spoke well.
But once it got turned over
to the defense side,
it was a completely different story.
The only thing
that holds up is the truth,
and that's what I was trying to say.
And the truth is also not perfect.
If I were to make up a story,
there would be a lot more elements
that were certain.
But, uh, I had seen Eddie target
so many unjust targets
that I knew no one else
would've taken that shot.
I'd never been
inside of a courtroom.
And, like, I... This was not my world.
And to be in that courtroom
was a different experience.
But guess what?
I'm gonna go up on the stand,
I'm gonna tell them exactly what I saw,
and what happened.
Every little minute detail
was getting picked apart.
And, um...
Yeah, it was extremely frustrating
because every single witness
has a slightly different story
from their vantage point.
But Parlatore was doing his best
to try and pick apart my story.
The thing about my story is,
it's the truth.
It was at that point I'm just like,
"Wow, this is a complete show."
It was really remarkable to see these
SEALs for the first time up on the stand.
They just seemed like…
…someone had gut punched them.
Parlatore was able to suggest that maybe
things weren't what the SEALs were saying,
or maybe what the SEALs were saying
you couldn't trust.
But, for Parlatore,
there was still the problem of the photo.
The charge related
to the death of the terrorist
was the only one that carried
a mandatory minimum of life.
So that was really the one thing
that, you know, if...
Even if you win everything else,
if you lose the murder count,
no matter what brilliant argument
I come up with,
he's still going away for life.
Uh, so that was...
That was certainly the wolf that was
the closest to the henhouse for us.
And what the prosecution was counting on
was two witnesses,
Craig Miller and Corey Scott.
Miller started off pretty well,
you know, explaining what he saw,
explaining what happened.
And he was not emotional
as he was in the NCIS briefing.
So it was very sober.
But when he was
under cross-examination, he…
There's no other way to put it.
He fell apart.
The defense used
all these manipulation techniques
that aren't aimed at finding the truth.
They're aimed at one person's benefit.
And it... the truth gets thrown
out the window.
Miller's testimony was
a real setback for the prosecution.
Craig Miller was the SEAL
who was gonna really kick-start the case
about the stabbing of the ISIS fighter,
and he didn't do it.
What did we learn
about Chief Miller today?
What we learned about Chief Miller
is that when you're not telling the truth,
you can't remember anything
to keep your story straight.
After the first couple of days of trial,
we felt pretty confident
because their evidence mostly consisted
of eyewitness testimony,
and so far all of that eyewitness
testimony fell completely flat.
So, at that point,
while certainly nothing is guaranteed,
it certainly felt like, you know,
we were well ahead.
Every day in trial
was such a saga of like...
It was more like My Cousin Vinny
half the time than it was like Tom Cruise.
It was... It was comical
how bad the prosecution was.
It was comical how much the guys could not
keep up with their lies on the stand.
This entire case was built
on just a small core group of people
that had personal animosity
towards Eddie Gallagher.
They told stories that just couldn't...
Couldn't hold up.
I mean, they were like storybook
about, like, tactical, just assault on BS.
And so by the time
they had given their testimony
and by the time
that they had gotten to trial,
they had told so many lies
that I think it was pretty much impossible
to keep up with.
So, that day when Corey Scott testified,
we really didn't know
what he was going to say.
Good morning.
This is probably gonna be
the pivotal day of the trial
because the medic, Corey Scott,
is going to testify.
- Go, go get him. We got him.
- What's going on?
And he's important
because he was closer to the stabbing.
He saw it from maybe a foot away.
And he not only saw the stabbing happen,
but stayed there until the captive died.
So he can actually say,
as a medical expert,
"Yes, this person died from those wounds."
And that was gonna be…
An earthquake for Eddie.
Like, how do you survive that?
The prosecution,
you could get a sense of individuals
that they were worried about.
You had some indication
that there was wild cards,
and that there were things that, um...
Potential surprises.
As the morning started,
this really weird thing happened.
Eddie had brought his kids
to the courtroom.
I actually leaned over
to the reporter for the AP and asked,
"Why would you bring your kids
to the trial on the day
when you know
Corey Scott's gonna testify?"
I mean, here's the guy who's gonna say,
"I saw your dad stab this guy in the neck
multiple times and then this guy died."
And the reporter for the AP is like,
"Something's up."
I went in that day thinking that
I didn't know what, really,
he was gonna say,
but I did...
When I walked in that day,
Corey was there,
and he had come up, and we shook hands.
And he just looked at me and was like,
"Everything's gonna be fine."
When Corey Scott was on the stand,
I was just trying to remain,
like, calm, stone c...
I would just not make
any facial expression.
Um…
…and I was more…
…interested to see, like,
what he was gonna say
on the stand under oath.
I can't recall verbatim
what he was saying.
All I know is when the prosecution asked
if I had stabbed him, he said, "Yeah."
To me, I was like, "What the fuck?"
Like, okay, obviously this guy is...
He's full of shit.
Asphyxiate is a very specific word.
The dictionary definition is,
"Someone who is deprived of oxygen."
So it doesn't mean
somebody had just stopped breathing.
And when he said
essentially he was deprived of oxygen,
and then he died,
that to me was very different
from "die from a loss of blood."
And why would he use that specific word?
I knew that that was not
just him misspeaking,
and he meant something else.
That... That meant something.
I'm standing at the podium,
and I'm kinda holding on to the podium
'cause I…
…I can't believe
that just happened.
I know it happens on TV a lot,
that somebody comes up
on the stand in the courtroom,
and there's surprise testimony,
and everyone in the courtroom goes…
But that is exactly what happened.
Corey Scott threw such a bomb.
His testimony completely
upended everything.
I think everyone in the courtroom
was like, "Okay, what now?"
Like, it's a circus. It is a circus there.
And so all of the media runs out,
and we're sitting there like, "W... What?"
To me I was sort of like, a dude
just admitted to killing this fighter.
But at the same time, I was more stuck on,
"Why did he just...
Why did he still say I stabbed him?"
Why both answers?
So I was still just
sort of bewildered by it, like…
This isn't over at all.