What Trump was doing when DeSantis was serving his country in Iraq in 2007

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What Trump was doing when DeSantis was serving his country in Iraq in 2007

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Jon Ham

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DeSantis was a freaking lawyer. Let's slow down a bit on the war hero part.

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But through an interview with his former commander in Iraq, the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times has learned more about what the young then-Navy lieutenant did overseas during this turbulent period.

He arrived in the fall of 2007 as part of "the surge" of nearly 30,000 U.S. troops, whose mission was to quell insurgencies that turned cities like Fallujah into bloody battle zones. But it was costly, and 961 U.S. troops died that year.

During the surge, DeSantis served as a senior legal adviser to the SEAL who commanded Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah, Navy Capt. Dane Thorleifson.

DeSantis was responsible for helping ensure that the missions of Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets in that wide swath of the Western Euphrates River Valley were planned according to the rule of law and that captured detainees were humanely treated, said his commander at the time.

"He did a phenomenal job," Thorleifson, 55, said of DeSantis in a Herald/Times interview. "It was a pretty complex time, with Iraqi sovereignty starting to take hold."

During this period, task force troops rounded up about 100 detainees, said Thorleifson. They were mostly military-aged males, some of whom were found with suicide vests while others were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was up to DeSantis, the lone lawyer with the Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG), to not only assure that the men were treated humanely and interrogated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military regulations, but to make sure that, when warranted, they were handed off to the proper legal authorities in Iraq for prosecution in that country's nascent judicial system, Thorleifson said.

Iraqi men were rounded up in raids conducted by SEALs and Green Berets to help take insurgents off the battlefield and gain intelligence, missions that DeSantis helped plan, Thorleifson said.

DeSantis, said Thorleifson, was a critical part of the task force that had about 400 personnel who were conducting raids, doing interrogations and detentions and moving prisoners into the Iraqi legal system.

Thorleifson described DeSantis as "one of my very close counsels that as we developed a mission concept of operations, he made sure it was legal. I respected him a lot as a JAG. He was super smart, articulate, resourceful and a positive part of the staff. I relied on him heavily."

The two haven't seen each other in person or been in contact since the end of that deployment, Thorleifson said.

"But I see him all the time on (Fox News)," added Thorleifson, who retired two months ago after 30 years in uniform and now lives in San Diego and works for a defense contractor. "I am rooting for him."

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What Trump was doing when DeSantis was serving his country in Iraq in 2007

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