2024 Election

Army Releases Final Report on Trump Campaign’s Manhandling of Female Officer During Shameful Arlington National Cemetery Display

This is a long time coming.

Although it is heavily redacted, as most sensitive reports from the military are, the U.S. Army has released the police report of the incident between a Trump campaign staffer and a female Army officer at Arlington National Cemetery back in August.

At the end of that month, the former president was invited to the famous military burial ground for a wreath-laying ceremony by some families of deceased soldiers.

But when the Trump campaign attempted to use parts of the grounds that were off-limits to photography to take pictures and video that would later be used for his 2024 presidential campaign, it led to an altercation between his campaign staff and employees of Arlington.

The campaign was warned well in advance of the event that federal law prohibits campaign or election-related activities within Army national military cemeteries, but they chose to pursue it regardless. Some might call that a natural extension of the same attitude that Trump’s shown toward the military (as far as respect) during his entire time in politics.

I am inclined to agree with them.

In fact, the government transparency group American Oversight thought the exact same thing, and sued for the release of the police report, which a judge ruled in favor of, saying it had to be done by Friday. Chioma Chukwu, the director of the group was pleased that the report was made public so that America could see “that there is still an ongoing federal law enforcement investigation into the August incident at Arlington National Cemetery.”

Chukwu expressed that it indeed “aligns with his history of politicizing the military and violating clear ethical boundaries, and it’s time for the public to have all the facts.”

There’s not much to debate here. Trump began his 2016 run by insulting one of the most famous war heroes in American history because John McCain dared to question how someone who’d dodged the draft was fit to serve as president. He went on to famously call veterans “suckers” and “losers” and even demanded that one of his military aides never bring a wounded veteran to an event again because “nobody wants to see that.”

Trump has zero respect for the military.

In the four sentences that are actually visible in the executive summary of the police report, even those aren’t fully unredacted. A key word that “appears to describe the staffer shoving the cemetery employee out of the way,” according to Newsweek, is blacked out. But the report does say that the Trump staffer “used both hands” on the cemetery employee in order to move her out of the way.

And in a letter accompanying the report, senior counsel for the Army Paul DeAgostino said that the blackouts were necessary to “protect personal privacy and information compiled for law enforcement purposes,” adding that the records were part of an investigation and “could reasonably be expected to interfere with ongoing enforcement proceedings.”

Further underlining the concerns of the American Oversight director Chukwu, the Army itself released a statement saying that they’d released the report simply to comply with the judge’s ruling, and that the police investigation “remains open and we are therefore unable to provide further information at this time.”

But since the employee declined medical treatment and also declined to press charges against the Trump staffer for assault or any other offense, it’s unclear what “investigation” may still be underway.

We’re inclined to take the military at their word, however, and assume that it has something to do with the fact that the Trump campaign did indeed go on to use the footage and images they captured illegally during the Arlington visit for campaign purposes, in violation of Federal law.

“They ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning,” Trump complained when the news of the altercation went public. The Trump team has continuously denied any wrongdoing, saying they had “permission” to be in the areas they were in. That’s impossible for more than one reason.

First, as previously stated, it is illegal to take pictures there, and specifically in Section 60, where the Trump employee assaulted the uniformed cemetery worker.

But ethically speaking, it’s also not possible for one family to “give permission” that can’t possibly be theirs to give: Other graves are located next to the one Trump took pictures near, all grins and thumbs up, and the families of those deceased veterans had no input on whether their dead kids could be photographed.

Section 60 is the area of Arlington National where deceased veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are buried. Those two wars have been denigrated by Donald Trump more than almost any other.

Even if one family thinks Trump’s disrespect is okay, others may not, and that’s why the rule exists at Arlington. But as we’ve already established, Trump cares about rules about as much as he cares about fallen or captured soldiers.

What he cares about are photo ops.

meet the author

Andrew is a dark blue speck in deep red Central Washington, writing with the conviction of 18 years at the keyboard and too much politics to even stand. When not furiously stabbing the keys on breaking news stories, he writes poetry, prose, essays, haiku, lectures, stories for grief therapy, wedding ceremonies, detailed instructions on making doughnuts from canned biscuit dough (more sugar than cinnamon — duh), and equations to determine the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. A girlfriend, a dog, two cats, and two birds round out the equation, and in his spare time, Drewbear likes to imagine what it must be like to have spare time.

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