Scott O’Grady first came to America’s attention when the Air Force fighter pilot was shot down over Bosnia in June 1995 after his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile and he had to eject into hostile territory.
He parachuted into Serbian territory and evaded captors for six days before he was rescued by the Marines.
When he returned home, he was hailed as a “hero” by President Bill Clinton.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/16/us/scott-ogrady-rewind/index.html
Good thing the president wasn’t Donald Trump, who criticizes the intelligence of soldiers, doesn’t want the wounded in military parades, and calls those who die for their country “losers” and “suckers.”
O’Grady was interviewed over and over about his courage and how he evaded capture.
“He told them how his faith in God, country and his desire to see his family got him through, but he also wanted to impart how the experience changed his view about material things and his wants,” CNN reported.
https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/16/us/scott-ogrady-rewind/index.html
His story became a movie, he wrote books about his experience as a fighter pilot in the Bosnian War, and he received his master’s degree in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary.
And then came the chapter of his life where he found himself in Donald Trump’s orbit – and, as has happened with so many good people who get involved with Trump, O’Grady’s life was sent spiraling out of control by the toxic winds of conspiracies.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/trump-nominee-pentagon-martial-law/index.html
In November 2020, President Trump nominated O’Grady to be the next Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
Trump’s nomination appeared a bit presumptuous because he had lost the presidential election and would leave the White House in six weeks or so. If O’Grady, as a political appointment, was approved the Senate, he would move into his office in the White House on the same day he would have to move out.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/trump-nominee-pentagon-martial-law/index.html
If O’Grady had not been nominated, his image would have remained of the fighter pilot whose intrepidness, courage, intelligence, and faith allowed him to succeed under the most dangerous of circumstances.
Instead, we learned he was just another conspiracy nut who insisted that Trump had won the election and that it was necessary for Trump to remain in the White Office, regardless of whether he belonged there or not.
CNN reported that O’Grady had spread misinformation on Twitter that Trump had won the election in a “landslide” and called the Biden victory a “coup” attempt, posting an old photo of Biden on November 25 with a photoshopped image of Xi Jinping, the president of China. On December 2, he retweeted Ret. General Michael Flynn, a Trump advisor, who called for Trump to declare “martial law” to remain in office.
CNN, in an investigation of O’Grady’s tweets, found that he called former President Barack Obama and military generals “sworn socialists.”
In addition, according to CNN, he retweeted a tweet that called former Defense Secretary James Mattis a “traitor.” In addition, according to CNN, he spread a “baseless claim” that the whistleblower in the impeachment investigation of Trump for pressuring Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden “dated the daughter of House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/trump-nominee-pentagon-martial-law/index.html
CNN included a number of O’Grady’s false claims that he had posted on Twitter:
On November 19, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that falsely claimed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and billionaire George Soros were involved in allowing foreign interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.
On November 23, O’Grady retweeted a tweet that falsely claimed, “They stopped counting votes when @realDonaldTrump was winning ‘in landslide fashion.’”
On November 25, O’Grady retweeted another baseless accusation that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and the state’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, may be covering up information about election results.
“Brian & Brad seem to have something to hide,” the tweet said. “We need to find out what it is. I suspect they are hiding the TRUTH.”
On November 27, O’Grady retweeted the false claim that Trump won California, despite the fact that Trump lost the state by more than 5 million votes.
O’Grady has also agreed with Trump attorney Sidney Powell who said a network of communists, CIA agents, Democrats, Republicans, and Hugo Chavez, the dead former president of Venezuela, worked with Dominion Voting Systems to steal the election from President Trump.
On November 25, he retweeted a tweet that raised the ridiculous possibility that the coronavirus was partisan because it disproportionately affected Republican politicians over Democrats.
In February 2020, O’Grady retweeted a QAnon conspiracy theory said a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democratic politicians and celebrities who abused children had worked toward overthrowing Trump.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/04/politics/trump-nominee-pentagon-martial-law/index.html
