Navy Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher, the highly decorated combat veteran convicted of a war crime, met with President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump Sunday at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“Finally got to thank the President and his amazing wife by giving them a little gift from Eddie’s deployment to Mosul,” Eddie and his wife, Andrea, wrote on their Instagram account, “eddie_and_andrea.”
Trump in late November ordered that Gallagher keep his status as a Navy SEAL, even after he was convicted of battlefield misconduct.
Trump has argued that Gallagher's case was mishandled by the Navy and said that he is defending America's warfighters from unfair and unfounded prosecution.
Gallagher was convicted of illegally posing for pictures with the corpse of an Islamic State fighter while deployed to Iraq in 2017 but was acquitted of murder in the detainee’s death. He was also cleared on charges of attempted murder in the wounding of two civilians, a schoolgirl and an elderly man.