According to the bio provided in the Mandate for Leadership, Miller was a part of the Trump Administration, serving in several different positions including Acting U.S. Secretary of Defense, Director of the National Counter-terrorism Center, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism and Trans-national Threats at the National Security Council. Before his time in the Department of Defense, he was in the military as an Army Green Beret in the 5th Special Forces Group. He commanded the special forces group in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When Miller was appointed to the position of Secretary of Defense by Trump in November of 2020, his appointment was met with opposition. All of the previous secretaries of defense still alive voiced concern about the transition of power to Miller and the role of the military in it. Officials of the Pentagon were also reported to have tried to block the transition.
He came under fire for his handling of several matters, including the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Miller has stated one of his main goals as Secretary of Defense was the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. He pushed for and oversaw the troops withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq in 2020 and 2021, facing opposition from Capitol Hill and Mark Esper, the previous Secretary of Defense who he replaced.
His troop withdrawals moved forward even though they were in violation of the National Defense Authorization Act which prevented use of Pentagon funds for removal of troops without review by Congress. According to Major Rob Lodewick, a Pentagon spokesman, Trump had given Miller permission to disregard the limitations.
When he took on the position of Secretary of Defense, Miller also brought with him people loyal to Trump. They included Kash Patel as his chief of staff, Ezra Cohen in a high intelligence position, Douglas Macgregor as a special assistant, and Anthony Tata as policy chief.2
Kash Patal had been Miller’s second in command in the National Security Council and is notorious for his efforts to discredit investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Ezra Cohen is a controversial analyst. Douglas Macgregor, a military analyst, is a senior fellow with The American Conservative and a frequent Fox News guest, and Anthony Tata is a retired general who is known for having called Obama a terrorist leader and falsely claiming Obama was Muslim.
The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley was allegedly so alarmed by Miller’s team that he told Patel and Cohen, “Life looks really shitty from behind bars. … And if you guys do anything that’s illegal, I don’t mind having you in prison.”
Miller was also investigated for his handling of the Capitol attack. He was in charge of the Pentagon on January 6, and so was in control of the National Guard in the District of Columbia. The National Guard took more than four hours to arrive after the beginning of the storming of the Capitol. Miller took over an hour after the Capitol Police requested help to give an order for the mobilization of the D.C. Guard, and troops did not arrive on site until more than two hours after his order.
Notably, Miller issued orders the day before the Capitol attack that prohibited the deployment of the D.C. Guard with weapons, body armor, helmets or riot control agents without his personal approval. This was very unusual according to the commanding general of the D.C. Guard, Major General William Walker.
Walker said that “all military commanders normally have immediate response authority to protect property, life, and in my case, federal functions — federal property and life. But in this instance I did not have that authority.”
Additionally, Miller was accused of obstructing the transition to the Biden administration.
In December of 2020, after Trump refused to concede the election, he ordered the Pentagon to postpone dozens of meetings with the incoming administration until January 1st. According to Miller, the Biden transition team had agreed to this, but the transition team disputed this, saying there hadn’t been any agreement.
