Clint Lorance, a former Army lieutenant, hopes to become a lawyer. He graduated from the Appalachia School of Law in May 2023 and applied to Oklahoma to practice law in the state.
Todd Fitzgerald, who served under Lorance’s command, sent a letter to the Oklahoma Bar Association, asking it to deny Lorance certification to practice law.
Why?
Because Lorance, Fitzgerald said, is a convicted war criminal who ordered his troops to fire on unarmed Afghani citizens in 2012, killing two. Fitzgerald and his other fellow soldiers turned in their commanding officer after witnessing his brutal crime, The Intercept reported.
“Eleven years ago, I witnessed the harassment, threatening, and murder of innocent Afghan locals by my former platoon leader,” Fitzgerald posted on Twitter. “Now, he’s applying for the state bar in Oklahoma to attempt to practice law. I’m going to object on moral fitness and character.”
Fitzgerald subscribes to that quaint notion that war criminals should not be “interpreting and upholding the law in the U.S.,” The Intercept reported in August 2023.
This opinion is not shared by President Donald Trump, who pardoned Lorance, who was serving a 19-year sentence, in November 2019.
Trump also pardoned Maj. Mathew Golsteyn, who was charged with killing a suspected bombmaker and was waiting trial. He reversed the demotion of Edward Gallagher, a Navy Seal was exonerated for stabbing teenage Islamic State prisoner in Iraq and of other killings of civilians.
“You know, we teach them how to be great fighters,” Trump said, “and then when they fight, sometimes they get, really, treated very unfairly.”
Trump is right.
America will never be great again as long it punishes soldiers who murder — or are charged with murdering — unarmed citizens.
Where would we be as a country if not for Trump and those pro-life folks on Fox Friends and other conservative commentators who are brave enough to say that American exceptionalism means our solders can kill anyone they want.
America-loving conservatives will have their backs and put them on television programs – like Fox and Friends did with Lorance, Golsteyn, Gallagher, and let those war heroes go on and on and on about how unfairly they were treated because the military wanted them to be accountable for war crimes.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=275430343382114
These soldiers know they have no better friend than Donald Trump, who will stand behind them — as soon as the shooting starts he will then hobble away on his bone spurs.
The Military Times reported that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen said that Trump avoided serving in the Vietnam War by making up an injury.
“Mr. Trump claimed (his medical deferment) was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery,” Cohen told members of the House Oversight Committee. “He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.
“He finished the conversation with the following comment: ‘You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.’”
More than 2.7 American soldiers served in Vietnam and 57 thousand were killed.
Trump criticized U.S. John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, who was tortured in a Vietnam POW camp for several years as a “f–_– loser”; disparaged American soldiers who died in service to their country as “losers” and “suckers”; and said that “he knows more” about fighting wars than the generals in the military.
https://www.militarytimes.com/n
https://archive.thinkprogress.org/generals-want-nothing-to-do-with-trump-0a5ad80cb682/
To Trump, the true heroes of the military are not those who died in service to their country, or are taken captive and tortured, or come home with injuries that will leave them in pain for the rest of their lives.
They’re not the soldiers who protect our country by putting their lives in danger so most of us don’t have to.
No, not those “suckers” and “losers,” as Trump calls them.
For Donald Trump, the real heroes are the soldiers who shoot unarmed people and then hide the evidence and ask soldiers in their command to lie for them.
A military court found Lorance guilty of the murder of two Afghanis by ordering his men to open fire on several motorcyclists who Lorance thought were the enemy.
“I was given a lawful order,” the shooter, Pvt. David Shilo, testified in Lorance’s trial. “My life wasn’t threatened at the time.”
The Washington Post reported that U.S. troops in Afghanistan could open fire only “if they detect hostile intent or actions in the battlefield.”
This, according to the soldiers in Lorance’s unit and prosecutors, was not the case.
Court documents said Lorance warned an Afghan man who lived on the property near the military outpost that “if there is enemy activity on your land, we will shoot and kill you, your family and your kid.” The document also accuses Lorance of “impeding the investigation by asking a soldier to falsely state in the incident report that the platoon could not examine the slain Afghans’ bodies because locals removed them shortly after the shooting,” the Washington Post reported.
Here is an excerpt of the letter written by Mike McGuiness, who, like Fitzgerald, served under Lorance’s command, to the Oklahoma Bar Association.
It appeared in the Army Times on July 7, 2023.
“After the shooting, Lorance confronted me and Staff Sgt. Daniel Williams, who was the sergeant of the guard that day and watched the entire situation unfold through cameras, and asked “What are we going to do about this?”
“Before we even left the village, I came to find out that he threatened to harm and kill the women and children who had come out to collect the bodies of their dead. Giving orders to shoot unarmed people, threatening women and children, and then asking subordinates to cover it up is pretty damning evidence of a lack of moral fiber.
“What displays that even more is Lorance’s insistence that he was the victim, his complete lack of remorse, and his failure to take accountability for his actions in Afghanistan.
“In a lengthy June 22 thread, Todd Fitzgerald, my friend and former teammate in the platoon, shared this: “That has stuck with me because he KNEW he killed innocent people . . . He told us to ‘forget’ we saw their identification. He tried to cover it up and obstruct justice. We deserve better people representing us.”
“What sort of example would it set if Lorance was allowed to practice law? A man who asked his subordinates for assistance to cover up his crimes? Someone who, prior to receiving his pardon, asked for relef that “different” from a pardon because precedent made the accepting of a pardon an admission of guilty?
“What would his acceptance into the Oklahoma bar mean to those veterans who served honorably and with integrity? What would it mean to those who might have fallen short, but have accepted their shortcomings, as well as the consequences of their actions? Lorance’s story should be one that inspires others to do better — until that person digs into the details, and witnesses the fluid and manipulative nature of his defense and release.
“Being an officer in the United States military and an attorney, which is an officer of the court, are privileges. They are not rights, and Lorance has shown that he lacks the moral character and judgment to be either.
“We deserved better in 2012, and potential clients deserve better now. Clint Lorance is a free man and should be able to live out his days, hopefully staying within the law and doing whatever it is he enjoys doing. But at no point should he ever again hold a position of power or influence over people. He has shown that he cannot be trusted with that.”
