Pentagon Watch – After an unnecessarily long five weeks to sign off on his resignation letter, the United States Marine Corps has finally discharged outspoken Lt. Colonel Stuart Scheller from the service. According to a social media post by his father, Stuart Scheller Sr., the Marine received a ‘general discharge under honorable conditions,’ the lowest allowed under the conditions of his plea deal.
This is less than an ‘honorable discharge,’ the best one can receive, but still considered ‘honorable’ and above lesser discharges such as ‘other than honorable’ and ‘dishonorable.’
Marine Corps Times reports:
An infantry officer with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Scheller crashed into the national dialogue following a now-viral Aug. 26 social media video of him speaking out in uniform. His demands for accountability from military and political leadership, both current and past, for the conduct of the war in Afghanistan eventually saw him jailed and court-martialed.
Scheller pled guilty to six misdemeanor violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) but provided strong words of context in his plea.
See here.
ADN reported on Scheller’s imprisonment without charges and release here. While ADN reported that ultimately Scheller got a relative ‘slap on the wrist’ from the court martial,’ with a $5,000 fine and the discharge, the manner in which the Corps treated him drew widespread condemnation.
Shceller has stated that he had been “slandered” by the Marine Corps, “imprisoned under false pretense as a ‘flight risk,’” and “held illegally” in jail.
As reported by ADN, in a court martial proceeding that lasted less than an hour, Col. Glen Hines, the Marine Corps judge who decided Scheller’s sentence, rejected the prosecution’s requested punishment and sharply criticized the Corps’ handling of the case.
Hines said Scheller’s videos in their full context showed a man who appeared “to be in pain,” “confused” and “significantly frustrated,” rather than a rogue and potentially violent Marine, that his lawyers argued was depicted in the charge sheet.
The judge described alleged leaks to the press and the command’s pretrial confinement order as raising the “specter of unlawful command influence.”
According to Scheller’s Facebook post, his discharge is not the end of his battle, but is just a “turning point.”
Scheller noted in his post that: “Out of respect to my senior leaders, I haven’t done a single interview since this began. But now it’s my turn,” stating he is about to embark on a “television media blitz” and announced his official new website authenticamericans.com.
Scheller added:
My television media blitz starts with Tucker Carlson on 4 January. Leading up to my TV interviews, I plan to make a post a day up to the date of my interviews starting with the 26th, the day of George Washington’s attack. 2022 is the start of a new year. It’s the start of a new generation. The lions are home from war. And we aren’t assimilating anymore.
Semper Fi Marine. ADN
Has more integrity and fortitude than most in position of power.