Less than 24 hours after President Trump tweeted that “after consultation with my Generals and military experts” he would end transgender military service, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent emails to the country’s top generals saying Trump’s announcement “was unexpected” and that he intended to say he was “not consulted.”



The two emails, obtained by BuzzFeed News, were sent by Gen. Joseph Dunford, the country’s highest-ranking military general, on July 27, 2017, to generals of the Air Force, Army, Marines, National Guard, and Navy.

They suggest widespread surprise among the chiefs, while raising further questions about Trump’s claim that he announced the position after consulting with military brass.

Federal courts have since temporarily suspended the transgender military ban, which Trump formalized in an August memo, saying transgender people who’d sued were likely to prove the president violated their due process rights.

As one federal judge wrote in November, “President Trump’s tweets did not emerge from a policy review,” adding, “A capricious, arbitrary, and unqualified tweet of new policy does not trump the methodical and systematic review by military stakeholders.”

Since then, courts have continued to consider the ban’s legality and determine how, exactly, it was created — and the extent to which leading military officials were involved. Officials announced this winter that the Pentagon would issue new policy recommendations to the president by Wednesday.

The emails were shared with BuzzFeed News on the condition that they were only to be quoted from, due to their sensitive nature.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff did not deny or confirm the emails’ authenticity to BuzzFeed News. Col. Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson for Dunford, said that because there are ongoing lawsuits over transgender people enlisting in the military, “it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time on questions related to actual or alleged internal DOD correspondence.”