Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, widely believed to be considering a presidential run in 2028, is facing renewed scrutiny over his resume â this time from his former Army supervisor who is questioning the governor’s claim that he led soldiers in combat.
In an investigative deep dive into Moore’s military service, The Baltimore Sun spoke with a retired Army Lt. Col. James A. “Jamie” Gottschling, who served with Moore in Afghanistan in 2005 and 2006. What Gottschling described was Moore’s patriotic service and dutiful fulfillment of his role, but exaggerations â and in some cases falsehoods â about incidents that occurred overseas.
Moore’s team said that “partisan politics got in the way” and led to Gottschling’s latest assessment, where he told Fox News Digital: “I wouldn’t call him a soldier.”
Fox News Digital spoke with Gottschling on Monday.
He said in the interview that while Moore would occasionally leave the base, the governor never saw combat. Gottschling said he would describe Moore and himself as “combat veterans” who are “not veterans of combat.”
“When you think of a veteran of combat, you think somebody that’s in a foxhole, getting shot at, IED blowing up the convoy, or even more dramatically, when you think about World War II movies, Easy Company, or any of those things where it’s like, those guys are getting shot,” Gottschling said. “That just wasn’t the environment that he was in.”
“He starts talking about, you know, in his TED Talk and really struggling with reintegration into the civilian world after the deployment, I’m like, ‘what is he talking about?’ You know, he spent six months over there, basically in, you know, a forward base that pretty much is as safe as anywhere. You’d probably be at more risk going to an ER in any of the cities in the United States than you would be in Afghanistan, in Salerno.”
Moore is widely considered a contender for the 2028 Democratic Party nominee for president.
“I just think it’s disingenuous to really associate with the struggle. I mean you can have some empathy for people that might struggle with the transition, but when you come over there pretty much dip into a combat zone situation, work on the staff for six months and then come out you know saying that, you know, all this trauma that you had… and it’s like, oh, give me a break,” Gottschling told Fox News Digital.
“So I think it’s just him emotionalizing and capitalizing on what soldiers do. And he’s not a soldier,” he continued.
“He was in the Army as a reservist in a staff position in Iraq, but I wouldn’t call him a soldier.”
The Baltimore Sun report describes Gottschling, who then held the rank of Major, as the “Army officer who supervised Moore daily” in Afghanistan. Moore has framed himself as a paratrooper in the famed 82nd Airborne Division who led troops into battle during his deployment overseas.
Moore worked on information operations coordination while the pair were stationed together at Forward Operating Base Salerno in the Khost Province near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. According to The Baltimore Sun, Moore’s job was “analyzing reports from infantry battalions and provincial reconstruction teams, coordinating for civilian assistance and helping <a href="https://foxnews.com/politics/pentagon-cracks-open-bidens-botched-afghan-withdrawal-sweeping-report-readies-all-receipts" target="_bl
