Wes Moore’s military record under renewed scrutiny after Army supervisor disputes his Afghanistan combat claims

Gov. Wes Moore’s (D-MD) credentials are under the microscope again after his former commanding officer in the U.S. Army disputed the Maryland governor’s combat-hero story, which Moore has made a defining part of his political identity.

Moore, a potential 2028 presidential contender, began his most recent memoir with a daring account of how he led soldiers into combat when he was deployed in Afghanistan.

“As a soldier, you never forget the first time you get shot at,” reads the opening line of Moore’s book, The Work: My Search for a Life That Matters. On the following pages, Moore recounted staring down death that day and leaning on his training to inform him of what to do during such a “high-stakes” offensive mission. “Find cover. Scan for the position of your men. Return fire.”

Moore stood by his claims of valor from that passage as recently as June, insisting to CNN that he “led soldiers in combat.”

But this week, the senior military officer who directly supervised Moore during his Afghanistan deployment between 2005 and 2006 came forward to challenge Moore’s repeated claims of being a combat leader.

Moore’s former Army supervisor, retired Lt. Col. James Gottschling, told Baltimore-area reporters that Moore lied about leading soldiers in combat as well as his own exposure to actual combat.

“It’s disingenuous to say that you led paratroopers in combat or that you did what would be direct action activities in a combat zone,” Gottschling said to Spotlight on Maryland.

Central to his political backstory

Over the years, Moore has repeated his combat-leadership claims, including during his nationally televised speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention. “I led soldiers in combat in Afghanistan,” Moore declared on the convention stage.

When he first ran for governor, Moore introduced himself to voters as a combat veteran and former Army paratrooper.

And in the introduction of his 2014 book, The Work, he described leaping out of planes, armed with an M-4 rifle, as part of airborne training and referred to fellow soldiers as “my paratroopers.”

The first page of Wes Moore’s 2015 memoir, The Work, describes a vivid scene of bullets flying by his head. (Baltimore County Public Library)

“He’s not a paratrooper,” Gottschling countered in his Spotlight on Maryland interview.

Gottschling said that Moore, though qualified to be airborne, never trained with the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division prior to deployment nor conducted training jumps. Rather, he served as an attached Army reservist who was not on jump duty in a parachutist position, nor did he receive “jump pay,” Gottschling added.

According to Gottschling, the governor was assigned non-combat positions, such as public affairs.

Moore worked under Gottschling in the department of information operations. Gottschling said that Moore was never involved in the employment of any weapons system.

Gottschling mentioned that Moore sometimes left Forward Operating Base Salerno, the U.S. military base in Afghanistan, to coordinate with Afghan officials. However, he said those excursions “never resulted in any hostile action.”

“When you’re talking about direct combat, leading soldiers that are under hostile fire, and leading them and supporting them, that’s not truthful,” Gottschling added.

Much of Moore’s daily work appeared to be administrative. Gottschling said Moore’s day-to-day responsibilities primarily involved analyzing reports from infantry battalions and provincial reconstruction teams, coordinating civilian assistance, and helping Afghans effectively communicate their needs to the public.

“He did a really good job trying to train the Afghans how to kind of sell their own story,” Gottschling said of Moore.

Asked about Moore’s written retelling of his time in Afghanistan, in which he portrays himself as a dedicated and caring leader to the troops purportedly assigned to him, Gottschling said, “That sounds more like what the role of a platoon leader or a company commander would be. I mean, if he was in a military police company, that’s what he would have been doing. But that’s not what his role was.”

As a brigade staff officer, Moore “didn’t have any troops assigned to him,” Gottschling added. “You don’t really lead staff officers. You coordinate with staff officers.”

Spotlight on Maryland reported finding no after-action reports, witness accounts, or other military files substantiating that Moore ever led soldiers in a direct-fire battle.

Military records provided by Moore’s office confirmed he received a Combat Action Badge for a minor incident involving “indirect fire” on Dec. 9, 2005, when rockets struck his Army base. No soldiers were injured in the event, and Moore was not awarded the combat badge for firefights he had publicly described engaging in with the enemy.

In a 2021 appearance on The David Rubenstein Show, Moore insisted he experienced firefights firsthand “literally within the first days of [arriving in] Afghanistan.” The Work contained vivid descriptions of Moore mid-firefight, hearing the sound of bullets landing so close they whizzed by his head and “a flurry of divots leaping out of the earth” around him.

Moore told On Patrol, a quarterly magazine of the United Service Organizations, in 2014 that one of his main duties in Afghanistan “was to engage and draw offensive engagements [from the enemy].”

Following a yearlong investigation, Spotlight on Maryland found no documentary evidence that Moore was on the front line as he claimed to be. Spotlight on Maryland determined in its reporting into Moore’s military service that his depictions of armed encounters on the battlefield are “complete fabrications.”

Moore pushes back on criticism

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Moore’s senior press secretary, Ammar Moussa, characterized Spotlight on Maryland’s reporting as a politically motivated attack.

Spotlight on Maryland is a joint investigative journalism venture between regional news outlets affiliated with Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative-leaning media conglomerate. The project focuses on exposing government inefficiency, corruption, and misuse of taxpayer dollars.

“Five days after Marylanders re-elected Governor Moore in a historic landslide, Sinclair is back to swiftboating a veteran by recycling the exact same stories and interviews they already ran months ago,” Moussa told the Washington Examiner.

WES MOORE IS FOCUSED ON MARYLAND, BUT DEMOCRATS WANT HIM TO RUN IN 2028

Moussa said that 20 years ago, “before partisan politics got in the way,” Gottschling signed Moore’s evaluation report declaring him to be in the “top 1%” of officers in the Afghanistan campaign and that Moore was “the best lieutenant I’ve encountered during Operation Enduring Freedom.”

“Now, a longtime Donald Trump donor who has openly stated his goal is to stop Governor Moore from being in contention for the presidency is working with Sinclair to contradict military paperwork he signed,” Moussa said.

Spotlight on Maryland contributors WBFF/FOX 45 Baltimore and WJLA-TV are Sinclair television stations, while the Baltimore Sun is owned by Sinclair’s executive chairman, David Smith, an ally of President Donald Trump.

In July, Smith threatened to sue Moore over comments he made on MS Now attempting to tie Smith to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Moore’s on-air remarks also claimed that “the job of the Sun is to do Donald Trump’s work” and “spread his message.” Moore refused to retract his comments, and Smith filed a defamation lawsuit against Moore later that month.

Moussa said, “Governor Moore’s service in Afghanistan—including earning the Combat Action Badge and coming under rocket fire alongside fellow service members—has been independently verified by official Army records and the Baltimore Banner, which interviewed fellow service members, and no partisan swiftboat campaign will change the facts.”

The Baltimore Banner article, cited by Moussa, quoted a Marine attached to Moore’s unit who regularly traveled with him. At least once their convoy “took some shots,” the Marine said.

Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) speaks at an event at the National Governors Association on Feb. 19, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

Regarding the “top 1%” line he wrote in Moore’s 2006 review, listing him among the top-performing officers stationed in Afghanistan, Gottschling said officer evaluation reports often exaggerate praise to help soldiers advance and that Moore shouldn’t take the commendation too literally.

“There’s a lot of embellishment with that, but that’s just how the [evaluation] system was,” Gottschling told Spotlight on Maryland. “You’re not trying to be deceitful about it, but you want to elevate what [your soldiers] did so they can get their next job or next promotion.”

Moore started invoking Gottschling’s evaluation of him as a defense of his decorated status when the New York Times reported in 2024 that he had falsely claimed, for almost two decades, that he had received a Bronze Star Medal, the fourth-highest combat decoration of the U.S. armed forces awarded for heroic or meritorious service in an armed conflict.

Later in 2024, Moore retroactively received the Bronze Star under unusual circumstances during the final weeks of the Biden administration, thanks to a close personal friend of Moore, who later served as a groomsman at the governor’s wedding, resubmitting the award recommendation on his behalf.

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Gottschling said that, while he felt Moore was “a valued member of the brigade staff” and performed well overseas, he took issue with Moore’s inflated representation of his military service.

“It’s the embellishment of the actions that really just contribute to his narrative, to his story, to his accolades, and it’s self-promotion, it’s self-aggrandizement,” Gottschling said.

Moore has admitted to mischaracterizing some events but argued that the inconsistencies in his storytelling should not undercut the valor of his military service.

“There’s maybe ways I could have articulated things differently, but it still doesn’t take away from what we experienced and what we did, and what, frankly, I’m still dealing with,” Moore told the Baltimore Banner.

Moore’s resume, including claims about his athletic, academic, and military achievements, has faced intense scrutiny in recent months as he considers a run for the White House.

The latest hole poked in Moore’s life story comes after he easily won reelection.

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