The Pentagon confirmed Monday that a three-star Army general’s promotion was blocked following a report that President-elect Donald Trump plans to target military leaders tied to the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue was nominated by outgoing President Joe Biden earlier this month to receive a fourth star and take command of the Army in Europe and Africa.
“We are aware that there is a hold on Lt. Gen. Donahue,” Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh told reporters, according to Reuters.
Donahue was the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan on Aug, 30, 2021. He famously appeared in a night-vision image, clad in combat gear and toting his M4 rifle, as he boarded a C-17 transport aircraft at Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
Multiple reports have said that U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., blocked Donahue’s promotion before the Senate recessed last week for the Thanksgiving holiday. Mullin didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday, Reuters said.
Under Senate rules, a single lawmaker can place a “hold” on nominations even if the other 99 want them to proceed.
Earlier this month, NBC News reported that Trump’s transition team was compiling a list of current and former military officers for possible courts-martial over their roles in the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Thirteen U.S. service members and about 170 Afghans were killed by a suicide bomber from the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate in an Aug. 26, 2021, attack outside Karzai International Airport.
The Defense Department has said the bombing “could not have been preventable at the tactical level.”
In August, Trump told thousands of National Guard members that he’d “get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity” immediately upon taking office, CBS News reported at the time.
“You know you have to fire people; you have to fire people when they do a bad job. We never fire anybody,” Trump said during a National Guard Association of the United States conference in Detroit.
Donahue also spoke during the 2023 ceremony to change the name of North Carolina’s Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty because its original name honored slave-owning Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg.
During an October campaign event in Fayetteville, N.C., near the the Army base, Trump pledged to change its name back to Fort Bragg.
Trump’s embattled nominee for defense secretary, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has also said he favored firing “woke” generals, using a slang term adopted by conservatives to criticize efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion, also known as DEI.
