Sen. Tommy Tuberville has blocked the promotion of an Army general who is a senior aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, people familiar with the matter said, threatening a confrontation between the Republican firebrand and the Pentagon just weeks before the presidential election while reviving a months-old furor over the military chief\u2019s medical secrecy.<\/p>\n
Tuberville (Ala.) has frozen the nomination of Lt. Gen. Ronald P. Clark to become the four-star commander of all U.S. Army forces in the Pacific, according to the senator\u2019s spokeswoman, Mallory Jaspers, and two other officials familiar with the emerging standoff. The maneuver, which has not been previously reported, restricts Clark\u2019s nomination from coming up for a vote in the Senate and could mark the beginning of the end of his 36-year military career.<\/p>\n
Clark, 58, was serving in his role as Austin\u2019s senior military assistant when the defense secretary underwent surgery on Dec. 22 to treat prostate cancer and a week later was admitted to intensive care in crisis, having developed severe complications from the procedure. Austin, who turned 71 in August, spent about two weeks in the hospital and eventually was diagnosed with infections in his urinary tract and bladder.<\/p>\n
The incident caused an uproar in Washington after it emerged that Clark and other senior members of Austin\u2019s staff did not know about his cancer diagnosis and surgery until he was in intensive care on Jan. 2, and then withheld that information from President Joe Biden and senior White House officials for two more days once they were made aware.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the Pentagon disclosed Austin\u2019s hospitalization to Congress and the American public on Jan. 5, three days after his top aides learned about it. The secrecy angered lawmakers from both political parties, who said the defense secretary\u2019s decision showed a stunning lack of judgment.<\/p>\n
Jaspers, in a statement, linked the hold on Clark\u2019s promotion directly to the political imbroglio over Austin\u2019s health crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cSen. Tuberville has concerns about Lt. Gen. Clark\u2019s actions during Secretary Austin\u2019s hospitalization,\u201d Jaspers told The Washington Post in a statement. \u201cLt. Gen. Clark knew that Sec. Austin was incapacitated and did not tell the Commander in Chief. As a senior commissioned officer, Lt. Gen. Clark\u2019s oath requires him to notify POTUS when the chain of command is compromised.\u201d POTUS is shorthand for president of the United States.<\/p>\n
Jaspers added that Tuberville is awaiting the results of a forthcoming Defense Department inspector general review of the incident, potentially leaving an off-ramp in the dispute.<\/p>\n
Another Senate aide familiar with the issue said that if Tuberville had not placed a hold on Clark\u2019s nomination, another Republican may have done so. Some Democrats also have concerns about how Austin\u2019s hospitalization was handled, the aide added, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the issue remains sensitive.<\/p>\n
A Pentagon spokesman, James Adams, said in a statement that Clark has served in several positions of leadership in recent military conflicts and previously led troops in the Pacific. The job for which he has been nominated would place him at the forefront of the Pentagon\u2019s efforts to contain China and defend Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\u201cLt. Gen. Clark is highly qualified and was nominated for this critical position because of his experience and strategic expertise,\u201d the statement said. \u201cWe urge the Senate to confirm all of our qualified nominees. These holds undermine our military readiness.\u201d<\/p>\n
The situation has echoes of an extended hold that Tuberville placed on hundreds of military promotions last year, in a dispute over the Pentagon\u2019s travel-reimbursement policy for personnel who seek an abortion outside the state where they are stationed. Tuberville\u2019s showdown with the Defense Department then gummed up the military personnel system for months. Eventually, his Republican colleagues decried the gambit as damaging and he backed down.<\/p>\n
In the case of Austin\u2019s hospitalization, Pentagon officials have said that at no point was command and control of the U.S. military in doubt. Yet they have struggled to explain why they waited days to notify the White House. Austin\u2019s chief of staff at the time, Kelly Magsamen, was sick with the flu, defense officials said, but other senior aides \u2014 including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. \u2014 also knew about Austin\u2019s condition and did not communicate it.<\/p>\n
Magsamen resigned from her role in June. A Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, told reporters then that Magsamen has \u201cearned some well-deserved time off,\u201d and that her departure had nothing to do with forthcoming findings by the inspector general.<\/p>\n
Austin apologized to the nation during a news conference on Feb. 1, saying the cancer diagnosis was a \u201cgut punch\u201d that he did not handle well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to be crystal clear: We did not handle this right. I did not handle this right,\u201d Austin told reporters then. \u201cI should have told the president about my cancer diagnosis. I should have also told my team and the American public, and I take full responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The matter has been under review by Robert Storch, the Defense Department inspector general, since January, with the independent watchdog promising then \u201cto examine the roles, processes, procedures, and actions\u201d surrounding Austin\u2019s surgery and subsequent hospitalization. Mollie Halpern, a spokeswoman for Storch, said in an email Monday that she was unable to disclose when the review may be completed. The inspector general\u2019s office, she said, does not provide timelines about ongoing work \u201cto protect the integrity of the investigative process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another Pentagon review commissioned by Magsamen found in February that there was \u201cno attempt to obfuscate\u201d Austin\u2019s cancer diagnosis, and that Austin\u2019s aides felt constrained by medical privacy laws. That review, conducted by career civil servants, was dismissed by Republicans as an incomplete examination of the facts by Austin\u2019s subordinates.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Sen. Tommy Tuberville has blocked the promotion of an Army general who is a senior aide to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, people familiar with the matter said, threatening a confrontation between the Republican firebrand and the Pentagon just weeks before the presidential election while reviving a months-old furor over the military chief\u2019s medical secrecy. Tuberville […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9256,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}