Marine Corps Times: “When Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller’s defense team called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, to the virtual witness stand Thursday afternoon, the tablet showing her Zoom testimony to the Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, courtroom fell down. So did her arguments during the sentencing phase of the Marine officer’s special court-martial, which meandered from her personal 9/11 experience to calls for President Joe Biden’s resignation. Amid repeated relevancy objections from Lt. Col. Nicholas Gannon, the Marine Corps’ top prosecutor, Greene was cut off multiple times by Col. Glen Hines, the military judge who will rule on Scheller’s sentence Friday.”
“Earlier in the day, Scheller had pleaded guilty to all charges against him as part of a plea agreement with the Corps, which will conclude a saga that began when he took to social media Aug. 26 to demand accountability from senior leaders for their perceived failures in Afghanistan.”
“Three members of Congress testified during the sentencing phase of the trial: Greene; Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, who appeared in person; and Rep. Ralph Norman, R-South Carolina, who testified via phone. While all three politicians argued at least briefly against the perceived ‘two-tiered’ system of accountability – Gohmert at the greatest length of the three – they each had issues tying their testimony back to Scheller’s sentencing. That problem was exacerbated by the fact that none of them personally knew the Marine, which is usually the case for character witnesses called for court-martial sentencings. Gohmert, who served as an Army lawyer in the 1970s, used his testimony as an opportunity to attack Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top military officer. He argued that Milley had disrespected then-President Donald Trump in June 2020 amid the Lafayette Square controversy in Washington, when he expressed regret for accompanying Trump in uniform during a photo-op walk to St. John’s Church amid George Floyd protests.”