A Navy SEAL charged with murdering a wounded person and shooting at noncombatants will be moved to “less restrictive confinement,” President Donald Trump announced Saturday.
Trump tweeted, “In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends @RepRalphNorman.”
An attorney for the SEAL in question told CNN that the timeline was “still being worked out” on the change to his client Eddie Gallagher’s confinement.
“One would hope that when a directive has been issued by the President it would happen quickly, so our anticipation is that it will happen today or tomorrow,” attorney Phillip Stackhouse said in an email Saturday morning to CNN.
Gallagher has been charged with various violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice while deployed to Mosul, Iraq, in 2017. He has been accused of stabbing and murdering a wounded person, shooting at noncombatants and posing for a photo and performing his re-enlistment ceremony next to a dead body.
The Navy did not have a comment on Trump’s announcement and referred CNN to the White House. CNN has reached out to the White House for details.
Several dozen members of Congress, led by South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, have been pushing to move Gallagher as he awaits trial in May.
Norman said Friday on Twitter he had spoken with Trump about moving Gallagher and that it was “appropriate that he be treated as a decorated soldier who still has the presumption of innocence.” Austin Livingston, a spokesman for Norman, said he did not have any details about the timing of Gallagher’s relocation and said the congressman was not taking a position on Gallagher’s guilt or innocence.
Gallagher was arrested last fall and is being held at a brig at the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, according to the Navy Times.
