Donald Trump sacks Defence Secretary Mark Esper, enlists Christopher C Miller as replacement

Months of tension finally boil over following Donald Trump’s US Election loss, with the President sacking his Defence Secretary.

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper (left) meets with Donald Trump and military leaders at the White House in October last year. Picture: AFP

Donald Trump has sacked his Defence Secretary Mark Esper and continues to fight furiously to have the election result overturned, alleging a “cesspool of fake votes” helped turn the result against him.

In a dramatic aftermath to last week’s election loss to Joe Biden, the President said he had “terminated” the 56-year-old Mr Esper, whom Mr Trump believed did not support him strongly enough.

“Mark Esper has been terminated. I would like to thank him for his service,” Mr Trump said in a tweet on Tuesday AEDT.

“I am pleased to announce Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected director of the National Counter-terrorism Centre, will be Acting Secretary of Defence, ­effective immediately. Chris will do a GREAT job!”

It was reported before last week’s election that Mr Trump wanted to sack FBI director Christopher Wray if he secured a second term.

I am pleased to announce that Christopher C. Miller, the highly respected Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (unanimously confirmed by the Senate), will be Acting Secretary of Defense, effective immediately..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 9, 2020

The Esper sacking came after Mr Trump’s unlikely legal quest to challenge the election results in the courts received heavyweight support from Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Senator McConnell said the President was fully within his rights to ensure that the election was fair and free of fraud.

“If any major irregularities ­occurred this time of a magnitude that would affect the outcome, then every single American should want them to be brought to light,” he said.

“If the Democrats feel confident that they have not occurred, they should have no reason to fear any extra scrutiny. Let’s not have any lectures, no lectures about how the President should ­immediately, cheerfully accept preliminary election results from the same characters who just spent four years refusing to accept the validity of the last election.”

US Defence Secretary Mark Esper speaks after he was sworn in by President Donald Trump in July last year. Picture: AFP

As Mr Trump’s legal challenges continued to move forward, the President claimed he would win in Wisconsin and Georgia and that he was the victim of fraud in Pennsylvania and Nevada. “Nevada is turning out to be a cesspool of Fake Votes,’ he tweeted. “Pennsylvania prevented us from watching much of the Ballot count. Unthinkable and illegal in this country.”

Attorney-General Bill Barr gave federal prosecutors blanket authorisation on Tuesday AEDT to open investigations into voting irregularities. Mr Barr stressed that his letter to US attorneys around the country was not an indication that the Justice Department had evidence yet of genuine cases of fraud in the election. But he unleashed the prosecutors from restrictions on such probes.

“Given that voting in our current elections has now concluded, I authorise you to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections in your jurisdictions in certain cases,” Mr Barr said in the letter.

“Such inquiries and reviews may be conducted if there are clear and apparently credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.”

Voting fraud investigations are normally the purview of individual states, which establish and police their own election rules. Justice Department policy has been to hold back any federal involvement until vote tallies are certified, recounts completed and races concluded. But Mr Barr told the attorneys that “practice has never been a hard and fast rule”.

This is the new SECDEF, Christopher C. Miller. He was the Assistant Secretary of Defense (ASD) for SO/LIC and is former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism. He served in SOF teams and was deployed to the ME multiple times. pic.twitter.com/JfeUymP1yy

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) November 9, 2020

Mr Trump’s decision to sack Mr Esper follows months of tension with the Defence secretary.

There had been speculation that Mr Trump would sack Mr Esper after the two fell out in June when the latter distanced himself from the President’s threat to ­deploy the military to control race riots. Mr Esper also distanced himself from Mr Trump’s photo ­opportunity when he held a bible outside St John’s Church in Washington during protests. Mr Esper and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley were asked by the President to accompany him on that walk to the church.

Mr Trump was also angered by Mr Esper over the Pentagon’s support for renaming military bases that carried the names of Confederate military leaders. Yet inside the Pentagon, Mr Esper was seen as being too accommodating ­towards the President, earning him the nickname “Yesper”.

Mr Esper, who took over from acting secretary Patrick Shanahan, is the third Pentagon boss to depart the Trump administration. Jim Mattis resigned in December 2018 after the President overruled his advice to announce that US troops would be withdrawn from Syria.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia