Earlier he accepted Thomas Modley’s resignation.
Head of the Pentagon Mark Esper accepted the resignation of Acting Secretary of the U.S. Navy Thomas Modley and appointed James MacPherson, the current Undersecretary of the Army. The Secretary of Defense wrote about this on his Twitter page on Tuesday.
“This morning, I accepted Secretary Modley’s resignation. With the consent of the president, I am appointing the current Undersecretary of State for the Army, James MacPherson, to the post of Acting Secretary of the Navy”, – he said.
Earlier Tuesday, Modley resigned after harshly criticizing former Theodore Roosevelt commander Brett Crozier, whose report on the coronavirus distribution aboard the ship came to reporters.
Over the weekend, Modley turned to the crew of Theodore Roosevelt and harshly criticized the already departed aircraft carrier Crozier, saying that one is either naive or stupid. The Acting Secretary of the Navy condemned a number of major U.S. politicians. Adam Smith (Democrat, from Washington State), Chairman of the Armed Forces Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, issued a written statement Monday night calling on U.S. President Donald Trump to send Modley to resign.
Reuters previously reported that Crozier, in a letter sent to the command, called for decisive action to save the lives of sailors and stop the spread of the virus. At a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, Modley stressed that sending a report to the vertical command itself should not be punished, while its transmission to the press is “a violation of order and discipline. He noted that he did not know how Crozier’s letter got to the journalists.