Overnight Defense

Overnight Defense: Austin nears decision on military sexual assault reform | Dems wage high-profile fight | Lawmakers push to replenish Iron Dome

by Ellen Mitchell 06/02/21 05:47 PM ET

Happy Wednesday and welcome to Overnight Defense. I’m Ellen Mitchell, and here’s your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. CLICK HERE to subscribe to the newsletter.

THE TOPLINE: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is nearing a decision on whether he will recommend the Defense Department change how it prosecutes sexual assault crimes, the Pentagon’s top spokesman said Wednesday.

Austin since April has pondered initial recommendations from an independent commission, which suggested taking the decision to prosecute sex crimes away from commanders and instead giving it to independent military prosecutors in an effort to improve the response to sexual assault.

Getting feedback: The Pentagon chief has since heard from service leaders after they turned in their feedback last week. They also spoke with Austin for “a little bit more than an hour” on Tuesday,” press secretary John Kirby told reporters.

Kirby said Austin does not have “a hard and fast deadline,” for his decision, but “it’s now with him and he’s taking the time I think necessary to make his own decisions and make his own recommendations to the president.”

The spokesman wouldn’t rule out that Austin “might want to have additional conversations outside [the Pentagon] or maybe even additional conversations with [service leaders] as he comes to his own conclusions.”

The waiting game: Austin’s recommendations to President Biden have been highly anticipated since January when he stood up a 90-day independent commission to review the department’s sexual assault prevention and response policies.

The 12 members of the group gave Austin their first recommendations three months later, the biggest of which was that prosecutions should be handled by lawyers trained to handle such cases.

Meanwhile, in Congress: Lawmakers, most notably Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), have also pressed for such changes. Gillibrand is currently publicly pushing for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pick a side by giving her a vote on her bill, which, among other things, shifts the decision for prosecuting “serious crimes” including sexual assault, murder and manslaughter from the chain of command to independent military prosecutors.

A growing shift: A move for change has been further buoyed by the Biden administration pledging to “end the scourge of sexual assault” in the ranks and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley recently dropping his objection to prosecuting sexual assaults outside the military’s chain of command.

DEMS WAGE HIGH-PROFILE FIGHT OVER MILITARY SEXUAL ASSAULT

Democrats are in the midst of a high-profile fight over how to reform the military justice system.

Though there’s growing support — both within the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill — for changing how sexual assault allegations are prosecuted, the question of how broad a reform bill should go is putting an increasingly public spotlight on divisions among top Senate Democrats.

On one side is Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who has been a leading advocate in the Senate for years on the issue. On the other is Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who has broad sway over military policy.

Gillibrand’s view: Gillibrand is publicly pushing for Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pick a side by giving her a vote on her bill, which, among other things, shifts the decision for prosecuting “serious crimes” including sexual assault, murder and manslaughter from the chain of command to independent military prosecutors.

“It is a hallmark bill, a generational bill of shifting how we address military justice, how we build the military justice system that’s worthy of the sacrifice our men and women in the military make,” Gillibrand said during an interview with CNN.

Schumer has said he supports the bill, but hasn’t weighed in on the feud between his fellow New York Democrat and one of his committee chairs.

A needed agreement: But Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has teamed up with Gillibrand, said that a snag to getting a quick vote is that the bill would likely eat up days, if not weeks, of Senate floor time because they don’t currently have a deal with Schumer and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to speed things up.

“The leaders have to have agreement,” Ernst said. “We want a time agreement to do it, but we haven’t been able to get that yet.”

Behind the scenes battles: The effort to pressure Schumer comes after Gillibrand, following behind-the-scenes battles with Reed, went public with the divisions last week by going to the Senate floor to publicly try to set up a vote.

But that effort ran into a roadblock in the form of Reed, a typically soft-spoken Army veteran, who rejected Gillibrand’s request four times on the Senate floor.

Reed is instead planning to put a proposal into an initial draft of a mammoth defense policy, which will move through his committee. His version would focus more narrowly on how sexual assault cases are prosecuted.