Trump To ‘Look Into’ Case of Dismissed Navy Officer Who Wrote Outbreak Letter

Eric Scheiner | April 7, 2020
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President Trump says he’ll look into the dismissal of a Naval Captain Brett Crozier, who was relieved of his duty aboard the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt after writing a letter of warning on an outbreak of Coronavirus on board that leaked to the press.

Naval officials have said Crozier was "naive” or "stupid" to think the letter would not leak.

Crozier’s letter, which was obtained and published by the San Francisco Chronicle, warned sailors could die if a majority of the crew wasn’t evacuated from the ship.

Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly gave a surprise speech to sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt and called ousted Captain Brett Crozier "too naïve or too stupid" to be a commanding officer of a ship like this, according to Fox News.

Modly later issued an apology and retracted the comments.

On Monday Trump said he’ll look into the matter because he believes Crozier has a good reputation outside the Roosevelt incident.

“He had a bad day,” Trump said about Crozier. "I'm going to look in to it." 

“It looks to me like he’s an outstanding guy. Just a little while ago I looked at his file, and people have bad days and we’ll take a look at it.”

“Look, he made a mistake. He should not have sent that letter or he should have gone through his chain of command, which is the typical way of doing it. You know, he's in the military is a very important person in the military. He knows it better than anybody in this room, what he should have done. And I'm sure he feels he made a mistake,” Trump later added. 

“But I'm going to look into it and I'm going to see maybe we can do something because I'm not looking to destroy a person's life, who's had an otherwise stellar career, as I understand it.”

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