The retired Army officer who supervised Maryland Gov. Wes Moore every day in Afghanistan says the governor’s long-told story of leading paratroopers in combat is false, and asked whether he believes Moore is a liar, he answered, “I do.”
Retired Lt. Col. James “Jamie” Gottschling made his case to the Spotlight on Maryland investigative team at Baltimore’s Fox45 and The Baltimore Sun, in a report published Sunday, and again to Fox News Digital on Monday. On Veterans Day, it deserves a close look.
Gov. Wes Moore has repeatedly said he led troops into combat during his deployment to Afghanistan. But his former Army supervisor is telling a different story, raising new questions about Moore’s account of his military service. https://t.co/m3eWzeerE7 https://t.co/KY6xHQMGIZ
— FOX Baltimore (@FOXBaltimore) November 8, 2026
What the supervisor says
Gottschling was the 82nd Airborne brigade’s fire support coordinator at Forward Operating Base Salerno in 2005 and 2006, and Moore’s direct supervisor. He said Moore worked for him only on information operations, analyzing reports, coordinating civilian assistance and helping Afghan officials communicate with the public, and was never involved in employing any weapon.
“He didn’t have any troops assigned to him,” Gottschling told Spotlight. “He’s not a paratrooper,” he added, saying Moore was not in a jump position.
Moore’s Army records, as reported by Spotlight, show six months and 27 days in Afghanistan, from Aug. 15, 2005, to March 14, 2006. Moore has said in interviews that he served 10 to 13 months. Spotlight found no records showing Moore led soldiers in a direct-fire engagement. His Combat Action Badge was for a minor rocket attack on the base on Dec. 9, 2005, in which no soldiers were hurt.
“I like to say that we’re combat veterans, but we’re not veterans of combat,” Gottschling said.
What Moore has said
“I’ve seen real patriotism when I led paratroopers in combat in Afghanistan,” Moore posted on X on Nov. 6, 2022, two days before he was first elected. In his 2015 book “The Work,” he wrote, “As a soldier, you never forget the first time you were shot at.” Fox News reports he stood by that passage in a CNN interview this July.
In 2024, The New York Times reported that Moore had listed a Bronze Star on a 2006 White House fellowship application years before he received one. The Army awarded it in 2024 after then-Sen. Laphonza Butler urged it to. Gottschling said he was never consulted and would not have agreed.
Moore’s response
Moore’s senior press secretary, Ammar Moussa, told Fox News Digital that “Sinclair is back to swiftboating a veteran.” He noted that Gottschling signed a 2006 evaluation calling Moore a “top 1% officer,” said Army records verify Moore’s Combat Action Badge, and said a longtime Trump donor is working with Sinclair. Gottschling has said openly that he does not want Moore in contention for the presidency and says evaluations of that era inflated praise. He also called Moore “a valued member of the brigade staff.”
The bottom line
Serving on a brigade staff in a war zone is honorable, and Gottschling says so himself. What he objects to, and what I object to, is a politician taking that service and dressing it up as something it was not, year after year, as he climbed. The men who were shot at in Afghanistan earned the words “I led soldiers in combat.” Those words should not be borrowed for a campaign.
Moore’s office answered with an attack on the messenger and an old evaluation its own author calls inflated. It has not produced a single record of the firefight Moore described in his book. Before Moore, a possible 2028 candidate, asks Americans to make him commander in chief, he owes the country a straight answer about what he did in Afghanistan, backed by the records.