Meanwhile over 1,000 members of his ship's crew have been diagnosed with COVID.
Kelley Beaucar VLAHOS
Maybe the Navy was just buying time but according to The Hill the service is not going to reinstate Capt. Brett Crozier after he lost command of the USS Roosevelt for emailing a plea for help amid COVID exposures to his ship in April.
A congressional aide confirmed to The Hill that the service will uphold its firing of Capt. Brett Crozier, who was removed from his post after a letter he wrote pleading for help with the outbreak leaked in the media.The Navy will also place a hold on the promotion of Rear Adm. Stu Baker, the one-star commander of Carrier Strike Group 9 and the senior officer onboard the Roosevelt at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak, the source said.
The hold on Baker is interesting since there was reportedly friction between the two men on the ship over how they should respond to the outbreak. Crozier's breach was that, frustrated with what he believed was a lack of action and concern for the health of his crew, sent an unsecured transmission to top Navy officers in and outside of his chain of command to ask for immediate relief. He was relieved of duty after the email was published in The San Francisco Chronicle.
After a public outcry over his punishment (he also was diagnosed with COVID) and a gaffe by the acting Secretary of the Navy which forced his own resignation, the Navy recommended that Capt. Crozier be reinstated. This wasn't taken very well by the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, which pushed for a deeper dive.
It is convenient for the brass that the news cycle and public attention have since turned to other pressing matters-reopening the country, police killings, protests. Luckily for the crew, out of the ultimately 1,273 sailors with COVID, one in five ended up being asymptomatic, a fact Crozier did not or could not know at the time of his actions.