Thanks to a change in the NDAA last year, Biden’s Pentagon forced a Gold Star family to pay to ship an fallen Marine to Arlington National Cemetery who died during Biden’s disastrous Afghan withdrawal.
This fallen Marine, Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, was part of the “Fallen 13” and the cost to move her body from California to Arlington was $60,000.
Here’s more via Fox News:
A Republican lawmaker is sounding the alarm after being notified that one of the 13 Gold Star families from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was forced to pay to move the body of their loved one.
Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who is an Army veteran, told Fox News Digital that during a meeting with the families of the “Fallen 13” last week, he was “enraged to learn that the Department of Defense had placed a heavy financial burden” on the family of Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, who were forced to find funding in the thousands to move her body to its final resting place after her 2021 death in Afghanistan.
The Gee family secured the funding, which came to “a staggering $60,000,” to move their loved one’s body after a nonprofit organization stepped in to cover the cost, Mills said.
“Amendment to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act”
According to Mills’ office, the option for the Defense Department to decline to pay for transport of the body was made possible by an amendment to last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, which states that the secretary of Defense may provide a fallen service member’s next of kin “a commercial air travel use waiver for the transportation of deceased remains of [a] military member who dies inside a theater of combat operations.”
Gee’s remains were initially flown to her hometown of Roseville, California, for a ceremony, but the responsibility for transporting Gee to her final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery would fall on the family. Honoring Our Fallen, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting the families of fallen American service members, stepped up to help the family move Gee via private jet to Virginia.
But Mills says the responsibility should fall on the Defense Department and not burden the families of fallen heroes.
“Typically, our fallen heroes are flown back home for a solemn service and then laid to a final rest at Arlington Cemetery with the utmost respect and honor,” Mills said. “It is an egregious injustice that grieving families were burdened to shoulder the financial strain of honoring their loved ones. This is an unacceptable situation that demands immediate rectification.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment.
This is really unconscionable. Not only did Biden’s nightmare of an Afghan pullout cost this fallen Marine her life, but his Defense Department then put this extraordinary cost on her family just to move the body to Arlington for burial. What a freaking slap in the face!