A prominent veteran of the U.S. Navy SEALs scoffed at the controversy surrounding SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s war crimes case and applauded President Trump after Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was fired on Sunday.

“Everyone knows he’ll always be a SEAL," Robert O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who is said to have fired the shot that killed Osama bin Laden, told the Washington Examiner on Monday. “They’ll never be able to take that away from him.”

Gallagher’s high-profile case, which has galvanized the SEAL community, was at the center of the Trump administration's ousting of Spencer, who was dismissed for privately proposing to White House officials a deal that would have allowed Gallagher to keep his SEAL Trident pin if the administration refrained from interfering in the proceedings against him.

Earlier this month, Trump restored Gallagher's rank after he was accused of war crimes and found guilty by a military court of posing with the body of a teenage ISIS fighter in 2017, but the Navy was considering further disciplining Gallagher by revoking his Trident insignia, a pin that is assigned exclusively to members of the U.S. Navy SEALS.

“This is all about ego and retaliation,” Gallagher said on Fox News over the weekend. “This has nothing to do with good order and discipline. They could have taken my Trident at any time they wanted.”





Trump intervened in Gallagher’s case last week, announcing he would not allow the U.S. Navy to strip him of the exclusive designation awarded to less than 5,000 service members ever.

“This case was handled very badly from the beginning," Trump said.

Gallagher’s attorney has requested the Department of Defense inspector general look into Spencer’s effort to have Gallagher’s Trident pin removed.

O’Neill, after learning of the Navy’s effort to demote Gallagher, offered to give his Trident pin up instead and described top Pentagon officials who disagreed with Trump's move as coming off as "whiny."

“It’s a special designation,” O’Neill said. “(SEALs) go through the hardest training in the world … basically beating you up. It turns you into a special warrior.”

The president's intervention, however, has sparked intense criticism from leading Democrats and media pundits.

"Secretary Spencer did the right thing, and he should be proud of standing up to President Trump when he was wrong, something too many in this administration and the Republican Party are scared to do,” Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

“Trump has recklessly crossed a line he had generally observed before, which had exempted the military from his belligerent, government-by-tweet interference,” wrote Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, whose father was secretary of the Navy in the late 1960s. “The Gallagher case illustrates how an irascible, vengeful commander in chief is ready to override traditional limits to aid political allies in foreign policy, law enforcement and now military matters.”

But the backlash to Trump’s intervention in the Gallagher case is par for the course, O’Neill, an outspoken Trump supporter, said.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but everything he does stirs up controversy,” he said. “Look at the case of [Lt. Col. Alexander)] Vindman, who the Left is holding up as a hero and then they vilify Gallagher? I mean, really?”

Other prominent SEALs applauded Trump’s action.

“Glad we cleared that up this morning,” said veteran and author Carl Higbie. “How about you review ADM Green’s trident and let Eddie Gallagher pick the board.”



Well... glad we cleared that up this morning.



How about you review ADM Green’s trident and let Eddie Gallagher pick the board#JustSayin https://t.co/XPrKu9vkT7 — Carl Higbie (@CarlHigbie) November 21, 2019



Gallagher’s case highlights what O’Neill characterized as “ridiculous” rules of engagement that service members are bound by while attempting to rid the Middle East of terrorism.

“I’ve been saying it for a while now,” he said. “These current rules of engagement are going to get somebody killed.”