US Army Reserve Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.) said that the Army is pressuring Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s defense team “to basically cop a plea, to plead out to something, and that would avoid the embarrassment of the entire long-drawn out legal process” on Wednesday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
Shaffer, who previously reported that a decision and announcements on charges for Bergdahl would come in mid-March stated that he believes the White House and the Pentagon do not want Bergdahl’s trial going on at the same time the detainees swapped for him are released at the beginning of May.
He then said, “I’m hearing that behind the scenes they’re [the Army] trying to put pressure on the Bergdahl team to basically cop a plea, to plead out to something, and that would avoid the embarrassment of the entire long-drawn out legal process, which requires an Article 41 hearing.”
Shaffer continued that the feeling among Bergdahl’s defense team is, “Bergdahl gave valuable information — intelligence information during his debriefing. And look, I talked to a senior Pentagon official who was actually involved in that, and he basically said, and I’ll use the polite term…’garbage’ what Bergdahl provided was garbage.”
Shaffer further reported that “the House Armed Service[s] Committee continues an investigation regarding other options relating to what the president had, besides trading the five Taliban. There were three other viable options that the president was briefed on that he had options to take,” and that he testified before the committee regarding this because “I may have been involved in one of the options.” He added that the committee was “getting stonewalled from everybody at the Pentagon and the White House.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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