Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. is going to stick to his call for accountability and plead guilty to several charges in his Marine court-martial, according to one of his attorneys Tuesday.
"This case began with a call for accountability and Lt. Col. Scheller will demonstrate to senior leadership how to accept accountability for his own actions," attorney Tim Parlatore told told The Hill.
Scheller's legal team is working on an agreement with the hope of securing an honorable discharge after he criticized Biden administration military leaders and called for their accountability after 13 U.S. service members were killed in an ISIS-K suicide bombing during the evacuation phase of the Afghanistan withdrawal at the end of August.
Scheller, a 17-year Marine, took to social media in his calls for senior leaders being held accountable and was reduced by his command to work in an office. After being given a gag order, Scheller violated that order and was sent to the brig, a military prison, while he awaited a pretrial hearing for his violating the gag order.
The week in the brig was "totally excessive and unnecessary," Parlatore told The Hill.
"The real big question that remains is whether all the very important messages that he brought out will be adopted," Parlatore said, adding "nobody is saying that he said anything that was untrue."
Scheller was granted a release from his pretrial confinement as he was facing a military court-martial for contempt toward officials, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, failure to obey lawful general orders and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
Scheller will next appear at a hearing Thursday at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
"The reason people are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marines on the battlefield let someone down," Scheller said, while in uniform, in his Facebook video.
"People are upset because their senior leaders let them down," he continued. "And none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, 'We messed this up.'"
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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