John Rood, Top Defense Official, Latest to Be Ousted After Impeachment Saga

WASHINGTON — John Rood, the Defense Department’s top policy official, is the latest member of President Donald Trump’s national security team involved in the Ukraine matter to be ousted from the government.

Rood, the undersecretary of defense for policy, will step down at the end of February, the department’s press secretary, Alyssa Farah, said Wednesday. A Defense official said that Trump had told Defense Secretary Mark Esper that he wanted Rood out; in his resignation letter, Rood himself made it crystal clear that he had been pushed out.

“It is my understanding from Secretary Esper that you requested my resignation,” Rood said in the letter to the president, which was dated Wednesday. “Therefore, as you have requested, I am providing my resignation effective February 28, 2020.”

Trump, for his part, said in a tweet: “I would like to thank John Rood for his service to our Country, and wish him well in his future endeavors!” As part of his tweet, the president shared a story from Bloomberg reporting that Rood would soon be leaving.

Rood was part of the team at the Defense Department that told Congress last year that Ukraine had made the necessary reforms to justify sending the country $250 million in promised security assistance. The certification was widely viewed as undermining a key argument Trump’s defense team made during his impeachment battle: that Trump withheld the aid because he was concerned about corruption in Ukraine.

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House but acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate. Since his acquittal, the president has moved swiftly to purge administration officials whose presentation of events did not align with his own.

In the days after his acquittal, Trump fired two of the most prominent witnesses in the House inquiry against him: Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Iraq War veteran on the National Security Council staff.

Another Pentagon spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, pushed back Wednesday against speculation that Rood was pushed out of the government because of his role supporting the security aid to Ukraine. “I have no information that would lead me to that conclusion,” Hoffman told reporters at the Pentagon.

Rood’s departure, reported earlier by CNN, was not entirely unexpected; he and Esper were known to clash frequently early in their careers, and Esper was expected to fire him when he became Defense Secretary last year. But the dearth of respected national security policy experts willing to work for Trump has made it difficult for administration officials to fill jobs.

In a statement, Esper said that Rood had “played a critical role on a wide range of DOD issues, including modernizing our nuclear deterrence capability, efforts to include burden-sharing by our NATO allies, our Missile Defense Review and implementing the National Defense Strategy. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

Rood clashed with Trump on issues beyond Ukraine, including a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Trump’s designation last year of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist organization.

James Anderson, the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, will be taking over Rood’s duties until a replacement is appointed by the president, the department said.

Rood’s departure accelerates the hollowing out of civilian leadership at the Pentagon, noted Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defense. Other recent departures include Eric Chewning, Esper’s chief of staff; Randy Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security; and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer.

The departure of so many civilians means that, ironically, the Pentagon is increasingly in the hands of two entities: Esper, who has adhered closely to the policies of Trump; and the senior military leadership under Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.