Trump wants convicted war criminal to be a 2020 campaign surrogate following presidential pardon

According to The Daily Beast, President Donald Trump is telling his allies that he wants Navy SEAL and convicted war criminal Eddie Gallagher to appear as a special guest with him at campaign events for his 2020 re-election.

Gallagher was court-martialed on several serious charges in 2018, including murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault of non-combatants, and obstruction of justice. He was accused by his fellow SEALs of stabbing a teenage prisoner to death with a hunting knife, randomly firing sniper rifles and rockets into areas with no enemy combatants, and threatening to kill fellow officers who testified against him. He was ultimately acquitted on most of these charges after blunders by the prosecution, but was convicted of desecrating the corpse of the teenage prisoner.

Despite all of this, Gallagher became a right-wing cause célèbre, with Fox News commentators and Republican lawmakers urging he be let off.

After months of hinting he would do so, Trump pardoned Gallagher in mid-November, over the objections of many veterans' groups and military officers who warned it would encourage other servicemembers to break the laws of war and disrespect their chain of command. He subsequently shut down a Navy review board into whether to strip Gallagher of his trident pin, and fired Navy Secretary Richard Spencer for objecting.