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FORT BRAGG, N.C. — President Trump’s harsh criticism of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who walked off his Army post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was captured by the Taliban, will weigh in favor of a lighter sentence for the sergeant, a military judge said on Monday. “I will consider the president’s comments as mitigation evidence as I arrive at an appropriate sentence,” the judge, Col. Jeffery R. Nance of the Army, said during a hearing at Fort Bragg. The judge is expected to sentence Sergeant Bergdahl in the next few weeks. The judge rejected a request that he dismiss the case...

The sentence the military judge will impose on Tali-Bowe Bergdahl isn’t about one self-centered deserter. It’s about our national defense. The judge’s decision will decide the state of discipline on battlefields for decades to come. Bergdahl has been charged with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. He has pleaded guilty to both charges. There are no mitigating circumstances. He must be punished, for his crimes and to make an example of him. Yet, the American left, which has had only two military heroes since 9/11 (Bergdahl and Chelsea Manning), continues to embrace Bergdahl’s very tall tale that he only meant...

Several soldiers were seriously injured in the search for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, including a sergeant who was shot in the head, an Air Force intelligence officer testified Thursday in the sentencing phase of Bergdahl's desertion trial. The officer, Lt. Col. John Marx said he was leading a team of Americans and members of the Afghan Army in July 2009 through two villages searching for Bergdahl, who had abandoned his post, when they were ambushed by insurgents from "all sides." "That's when all hell broke loose," Marx said. About six feet from him, he said, Sgt. 1st Class Mark Allen was...

Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier held as a Taliban captive in Afghanistan for five years, has pleaded guilty to desertion and misbehaviour before the enemy. The 31-year-old Army sergeant entered his plea on Monday before a military judge at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Idaho native's lawyers have argued he cannot get a fair trial following criticism from Donald Trump during last year's presidential campaign. Mr Trump had called him "a no-good traitor who should have been executed."

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl expected to plead guilty to desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.

Potential jurors for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s court-martial in October may be forced to tell lawyers if they voted for President Trump. Comments made by Mr. Trump during his 2016 Republican campaign for the White House have influenced one of the most high-profile, court-martial cases in U.S. Army history. Lawyers for Sgt. Bergdahl, the soldier who left his post in Afghanistan in June 2009, have a private 41-question survey for a Fort Bragg judge to consider. One of 17 questions objected to by prosecutors involves support for Mr. Trump’s campaign. “The principal issue has to do with ensuring we are...

Lawyers for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl fulfilled a promise Thursday to appeal to the top military court to toss out their client’s case over disparaging comments made by President Trump on the campaign trail. In a 314-page motion filed Thursday with the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, defense lawyers said the “unprecedented circumstances” of Trump repeatedly calling Bergdahl a traitor who should be executed constitute apparent unlawful command influence (UCI). “To describe President Trump’s comments about Sgt. Bergdahl as merely ‘troubling,’ ‘made without consideration of their possible impact on the trial of the accused,’ ‘disturbing and disappointing,’...

After no pardon from Obama, claim of no possibility for fair trial under Trump. Military deserter Bowe Bergdahl was hoping for a pardon from President Obama which never came. Now that President Trump has taken office, Bergdahl’s lawyers are claiming he can’t be guaranteed a fair trial due to Trump’s prior criticism of him. The Hill reports: Bergdahl lawyers press for dismissal after Trump inauguration Lawyers for former prisoner of war and Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl made good on their promise to call for his case to be dismissed based on President Trump’s campaign comments against him, filing a motion...

Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who faces court-martial on a charge of desertion after walking away from his base in Afghanistan and spending five years in militant captivity, sought and failed to receive a presidential pardon by President Barack Obama before he left office, according to Bergdahl’s attorney Eugene Fidell. The attorney acknowledged the effort Friday after Berghdahl’s legal team filed a new motion to dismiss the Army’s case against their client, citing past harsh rhetoric against Bergdahl by newly sworn-in President Trump. The New York Times previously reported the pardon effort was considered, but Bergdahl’s legal team...

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — A military judge weighing evidence of injuries to service members who searched for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl said Friday that the soldier bears some responsibility for risky search missions triggered by him walking off his post in Afghanistan. The judge, Army Col. Jeffery Nance, said at a pretrial hearing that he still hasn't decided how far he'll let prosecutors go, if at all, in using evidence of the serious wounds. One soldier was shot in the head and suffered a traumatic brain injury; the other required hand surgery. "Sgt. Bergdahl is not responsible for a...

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — A military officer testified Monday that he saw another soldier shot in the head during the 2009 search for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who's accused of endangering his comrades when he walked off his post in Afghanistan. The testimony came at a pretrial hearing at which an Army judge also agreed to delay Bergdahl's trial by several months until May 15, 2017. Prosecutors are arguing that the judge should allow evidence of two wounded soldiers' injuries into the case to help them show that Bergdahl's disappearance effectively put other military members in harm's way.

<p>An Army deserter from North Carolina is facing federal charges for allegedly receiving tens of thousands of dollars in veteran benefits by faking war wounds and military honors.</p> <p>Roy Lee Ross, Jr., 64, of Morganton, N.C., is accused of defrauding the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs by using the name of another Army veteran, according to the Charlotte Observer.</p>

Bowe Bergdahl compared his first year in Taliban captivity — starved, stinking and chained to a bed — to being tossed in a closet and forgotten. “Picture someone taking a bag, throwing it into the closet, shutting the door and just forgetting about it. That was basically how they treated me,” he said. (snip) Although watching over Bergdahl was a high honor, the guards were often bored and would pass the time by making videos of him, interrogating him with ridiculous questions or shaving his beard into shapes they found amusing, he said. “They ask you, is Obama gay and...

<p>The Army on Tuesday provided a behind the scenes look at the prosecution of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, releasing pages of internal court communications that show the defense believes it is hamstrung in responding to Donald Trump’s charge that their client is a traitor.</p>

Bergdahl told a general who investigated the case that he hoped to cause an alarm by leaving his post, then walk to a larger base in Afghanistan so he could have an audience with a top commander. "So, the idea was to -- it was -- literally, it was a sacrificial -- it was a self-sacrifice thing," Bergdahl said, according to the transcript of a 2014 interview with Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl.

HAILEY, Idaho -- It was the third text message from the unfamiliar number -- the one that made direct reference to Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl -- that frightened Sherry Horton. It was written in nearly unintelligible gibberish, but its tone was unmistakably menacing. Ms. Horton had reason to be fearful: Hailey is the hometown of the American soldier who was vilified as a deserter and possibly even a traitor days after his release from Taliban captivity in May 2014 in a prisoner swap. Here in Hailey, death threats soon followed -- hundreds of calls to the Chamber of Commerce and to...

A dispute over classified information has put on hold the court-martial of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl on charges of desertion and cowardice. Col. Jeffrey Nance, the judge in the case, issued a stay in the proceedings while an appeals court rules on what classified information the Bergdahl defense team can receive from the prosecution. The military requested the delay, claiming an "abundance of caution" because some of the information sought hadn't been cleared with federal classification authorities.

The first woman in Tennessee and the fourth in the nation to enlist as a combat engineer in the Army went AWOL last month and is now considered a deserter, according to a military spokesperson. Erika Lopez made headlines in July when she enlisted for a role that could put her on the front lines of battle, just after the U.S. Army lifted its ban on women in combat roles. Ms. Lopez was in basic training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, by September but was placed on convalescent leave by the end of the year, according to a local CBS...

Although watching over Bergdahl was a high honor, the guards were often bored and would pass the time by making videos of him, interrogating him with ridiculous questions or shaving his beard into shapes they found amusing, he said. “They ask you, is Obama gay and sleeps with men?” he recalled. His young guards were also curious about where US military bases got their prostitutes, alcohol and drugs, and were obsessed with American soft drinks, he added.

Since an Army general has finally demonstrated the backbone, rarely seen nowadays among his peers, to defy the White House and proceed with the prosecution of Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, the liberal media is doing its very best to downplay the possible seriousness of the charges. Even conservative venues are repeating the deceit that the desertion charge carries a maximum penalty of five years confinement while the lesser known second charge can result in a life sentence at maximum. I hate to disappoint all the liberal Democrats and their media mouthpieces whose war heroes...