Interesting story on NPR today: Trump has repeatedly claimed that Bowe Bergdahl (the soldier going to court martial for cooperating with the Taliban) is a traitor and should be shot or thrown out of an airplane. But Article 37 of the UCMJ says that any commanding officer can make pretrial comments that make a fair military trial impossible. So Bergdahl will probably walk.
Trumps own comments, repeated over and over on TV, have tainted any possible jury. Apparently the military take this very seriously and a number of cases have been dismissed when commanding officers have commented. For example, one CO said the he hates DUIs, so any one convicted of a DUI should get a dishonorable discharge. The result was a lot of dismissed DUI cases under his command.
