Democrats have called for a US army report into an apparent altercation that erupted when Donald Trump attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington national cemetery commemorating the 13 soldiers killed in a suicide bombing during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
In a letter to the US army secretary, Christine Wormuth, Democrats with the House oversight committee requested a report by Monday into a reported showdown between a cemetery employee and the former president’s staff, including whether the Republican nominee’s “campaign staff violated federal law or cemetery rules and whether the Trump campaign informed the families of service members buried at the cemetery that their gravestones would be used in Mr Trump’s political campaign ads”, as CBS reported.
The cemetery – the resting place of more than 400,000 military veterans and their eligible dependents dating back to the revolutionary war – is considered a politics-free zone. But on Monday, on the invitation of relatives of the soldiers killed in Kabul, Trump brought campaign photographers to document the visit.
An army spokesperson said on Thursday that a female Arlington national cemetery official was “abruptly pushed aside” during an argument with Trump aides over photos and filming on the grounds for partisan, political or fundraising purposes.
A spokesperson for the military said the episode was “unfortunate”, and it was “also unfortunate” that the cemetery “employee and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked”. The employee is not pressing charges.
The army noted that Arlington national cemetery conducts nearly 3,000 such public ceremonies annually “without incident”, and visitors to the 26 August ceremony had been made aware of laws that prohibit political activity.
The Trump campaign responded that it had been granted explicit permission to bring “campaign-designated media” to the section of the cemetery for the slain soldiers’ – or Gold Star – families. The campaign also said that “there was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made”.
Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said in the letter that “it appears that the Trump campaign – which arrived at the cemetery with a photographer and videographer – completely flouted the laws and rules they were informed of and filmed footage in the restricted area for use in a political TikTok video”.
Raskin also cited an apology issued by the Utah governor, Spencer Cox, who had attended the ceremony with Trump and posted photos of the event to his official social media accounts.
“This was not a campaign event and was never intended to be used by the campaign,” Cox wrote in a social media post on Wednesday. “It did not go through the proper channels and should not have been sent. My campaign will be sending out an apology.”
Republicans are hoping to make the US withdrawal from Afghanistan a campaign issue illustrating what they considered to be Democrat incompetence in foreign affairs that led to a terrorist bombing at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate that killed 13 American military members and more than 100 Afghans. Islamic State terrorists claimed responsibility for the attack.
In an interview with CNN Thursday, vice-president and Democratic White House nominee Kamala Harris confirmed she was the last person in the room before Joe Biden made the decision to pull US troops out of Afghanistan.
Asked if she felt comfortable with the president’s decision, Harris responded: “I do.”
