Army officer alleges reprisal for his account of Capitol riot response

The Washington Post reported that an active-duty Army officer filed a complaint alleging that he faced reprisal for providing his firsthand account of the response to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The Army officer, Lt. Colonel Shani G. Davis, submitted a complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog agency that protects whistleblowers, on Feb. 17, alleging that he was retaliated against because he spoke out about his observations during the riot. “[A]fter vaguelty [sic] responding to questions about the event posed by the news media, I made attempts to correct misinformation about the National Guard’s response,” he wrote in his complaint. In the days following the attack on the Capitol, Davis provided detailed personal accounts of the incident in interviews with various media outlets, including The Washington Post. In the complaint, he alleges that Army leadership began a retaliatory investigation immediately after his media interviews and that he was subjected to disciplinary proceedings. Davis seeks a “cease and desist” order against the investigation, which he says is “grounded in an unauthorized punishment and in bad faith.” He also seeks an apology, a censure of military leaders involved in the investigation, a financial settlement, and an “effective remedy” of his “remediable damages,” including “pain and suffering, aggravation, inconvenience, and lost wages and benefits.”