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A former principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy has resigned from the Defense Department’s science board.
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James Miller’s reasoning centered on President Donald Trump’s visit Monday to St. John’s Church, where police cleared protesters with tear gas so that he could pose with a Bible for photographs.
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Defense Secretary Mark Esper was also present during the visit.
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“You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it,” Miller wrote to Esper in his resignation letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “Instead, you visibly supported it.”
A Department of Defense adviser has resigned, effective immediately, from the military’s science board, citing what he believed to be a violation of conduct from Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.
In his resignation letter to Esper, which was obtained by The Washington Post, James Miller Jr., who served as the US undersecretary of defense for policy from 2012 to 2014, recalled that he swore an oath of office to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and “to bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” similar to what the defense secretary had done before he took office.
“On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath,” Miller wrote to Esper.
Miller’s reasoning centered on President Donald Trump’s visit Monday to St. John’s Church in Washington, DC, where police cleared peaceful protesters with tear gas so that he could pose with a Bible for photographs.
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper with President Donald Trump during a ceremony in the Oval Office on July 23. Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press
Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop, described the scene to CNN and The Washington Post as an “abuse of sacred symbols” amid “a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for.”
Budde told The Post that she “was not given even a courtesy call” that authorities would be clearing the area “with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop.”
Esper, along with US Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also present during the visit.