From Press to Punished: What Happened to Me Can Happen to You.

The Real Story Behind Last Week's Firing

On Thursday, May 29th, I was asked to turn in my Pentagon badge.

By Friday, I was out of a job.

Just days earlier, I published a personal Substack article titled The Secretary of Defense-sive, a little dicey of a headline to my friends and colleagues sure, but nonetheless a “pull you in headline” to purposefully make you read the reality of what it’s like at the Pentagon, what the new press restrictions within the walls of the building meant, and the dangerous precedent they set.

I pointed out that these restrictions were not based on any credible threat from the Pentagon media present every single day, but rather a growing desire to control how, and when, the public receives information.

Today - that looks like @DoDRapidResponse writing a MAGA-esque post on X — something a little spicy — that of course, being conservative, I naturally likely agree with. My favorite one happens to be this one from the beginning of the Administration:

‘Cause yeah I remember when fake news did so much hootin’ and hollering saying conditions at Gitmo were unsafe despite this tweet showing that prisoners be living like kings at the Ritz Carlton for criminals.

Anyways, moving on…

That Substack piece I wrote, was both factual and informal. And guess what? It wasn’t the first Substack I had ever published while employed by my former network.

I’ve written about my experience in the White House, the use of the autopen, and issues of national security both on Substack and on informal platforms in the past while employed by them — all without a single complaint.

My former networked even interviewed me twice over my insider auto-pen information this year and had no issue with me making appearances on Fox News while employed by them too.

Why do I mention this?

So you don’t have to read between the lines.

I’ve engaged and shared the same information that I have on work platforms that I have on personal platforms - informal and formal.

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So here’s the missing pieces no other outlet has been able to tell you yet and why I needed to write a follow-up Substack article on the Pentagon.

I can confirm, on two separate occasions that a Pentagon official under the Office of the Secretary of Defense - yes one of Hegseth’s people - contacted my employer to express frustration over my reporting.

The second time happened to be the very same day I was asked to hand over my Pentagon badge.

If that feels coincidental to you, you haven’t been paying attention to our government long enough.

And if you thought that was the last time someone from Hegseth’s team involved themselves in my employment… keep reading.

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The Government Had No Involvement — Until It Did

When CNN was the first to report about me being booted off my network – let me be the first to say that I was not expecting Brian Stelter, of all people, to report on my firing.

If you’re MAGA – you know.

But seriously, I’ll give credit where credit is due.

He did not go off the rails and write his article on anything more than what he knew:

He knew I published a Substack article about the Pentagon, he knew my former employer was/is a staunch supporter of the Trump Administration, and he knew I happened to be fired.

Point being, I refrained from telling any individuals (to include close confidants) or outlets further information other than confirming my employment status.

The rest of these articles all became hearsay.

*Cue the DailyMail for calling me a woman scorned insinuating some strained relationship with Hegseth.*

Honestly I found that article to be a direct insult and inflammatory response solely based on me being a woman and omitting the fact that I have a loving husband that I am dedicated to for life.

Without going off on that tangent, my point is that I still think the media can absolutely be cruddy. Two things can be true at once: your government can be running cover for itself while the media, most of the time in modern history, is too silly (and that’s me putting in nicely) to cut through the noise and get the real story.

The headlines reduced the whole situation into a “boo-hoo MAGA girl got fired and wants you to feel bad for her.”

Let me be painfully clear – this has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with our Government.

Take this article that made circulation last week as an example… particularly this part right here from the Associated Press:

Mmmmm… a Pentagon official anonymously claiming that the Pentagon had ‘no involvement.’

Well that’s not what I heard through the backchannels.

After I was let go, I was contacted via LinkedIn by another official within the Department of Defense, again this official also serving under the Office of the Secretary of Defense, again this is Hegseth’s team.

On the evening of Sunday, June 1st we had our first phone call.

This individual from the very institution that claims to have had no hand in my employment — offered to help me get my job back.

If this entity wasn’t involved, why would an individual from said entity think they had the power to reverse my fate and give me my job back?

There’s no way to interpret that offer other than as a quiet admission of influence.

Furthermore while on the phone, this official expressed to me that my situation was “a symptom of a cancer” under Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon.

I told this official that I was not interested in having my job back, especially as it appears my government was — whether you want to say directly or indirectly —impacting my employer’s impression of my hard work and output.

*Cue the 3 months of manual labor, moving in a 130 pound tv through the Pentagon basement, patching holes, painting walls, ripping up and installing carpet, all while I broke news, got legacy government officials fired for malpractice, and even ran cover during the media’s reporting of Signalgate.*

In response, the official asked me what ‘right’ would look like for me.

I told them that the only way to make this right is for me to have a sit down interview, unscripted, uninterrupted with Hegseth in a long form podcast style interview to take place within the Pentagon Briefing Room in which the Pentagon could prove my article wrong.

In the same breath I told them it would be advantageous to take this route as a way to also prove the Left/Mainstream Media wrong and do something unexpected… make all those headlines about me, about the Pentagon, about Hegseth… mean nothing.

I thought rescinding the latest press memo and opening the doors to the press briefing room to the rest of the reporters to freely ask questions after I concluded my interview with the cameras still rolling would be a nice touch, because again, it’s not about me, it’s about all of us.

What a way to kick off Hegseth’s first ever press briefing at the Pentagon (yes he still hasn’t had one since taking office).

They told me they liked the idea, saw the vision, and said the only way they could get this to happen is if they win over the likes of Tim Parlatore (Hegseth’s lawyer), Ricky Buria (whom many of my sources say he has more dirt on Hegseth than anything else and that’s why he is somehow the sole liberal working for the SecDef, a holdover of former SecDef Lloyd Austin), and of course, his wife, Jennifer.

I gave them some wiggle room to do their best… to execute on the plan, but they gave me nothing.

I suppose the DoD was just banking on me simply wanting my job back.

Makes sense, especially considering the call opened with them trying to gauge whether I wanted their help intervening on my behalf to reverse my firing.

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Now let me supplement this section here with just a bit about DoD’s Rapid Response account on X.

This is the same Pentagon communications team that routinely uses its government-branded social media to publicly rebuke journalists they disagree with — which hey I don’t have a problem with — open communication is a good thing.

But just this past weekend, ABC’s Terry Moran posted an unhinged rant on a top Trump official — and within hours, the DoD fired back — that kind of swift, public response is their ethos.

But when I was ousted — and the story made national headlines on CNN, airing on Fox News, circulating all over X — the same account said nothing.

No tweet. No denial. Anonymously commenting that they had no involvement privately to news outlets and individuals.

Even ignoring a tweet from one of their least favorite Pentagon reporters, Konstantin Toropin, when he reported on my firing.

Now I mention this because it’s incredibly out of pattern with their standard operating procedures.

Is it because they knew that I knew how they contacted my employer, or that they contacted me?

Or maybe because there was a grace period hoping I would just go away and this wouldn’t be a stain on MAGA?

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Freedom of the Press Starts with Us - Ends With You

Despite insinuations from anonymous DoD officials and beltway whisper campaigns, my reporting, and those of my colleagues, to include the very outlets that I would normally refuse to acknowledge, never leaked classified or sensitive information.

I understand the intelligence community. I’ve served this country. I know the rules. And I follow them — religiously.

Everything I reported was based on public documents, on-the-record statements, or confirmed off-the-record sources who were not violating national security protocols.

I never entered a SCIF. I never published a single classified cable. I never walked unescorted through restricted zones.

If anything, I followed the rules more strictly than many of the officials who now claim to be concerned about them.

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Our Government Has Done This Before

In 1798, just over a decade after the First Amendment was ratified, President John Adams signed the Sedition Act into law — effectively criminalizing criticism of the federal government. It became a federal offense to “write, print, utter, or publish… any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against Congress or the president.

Let that sink in: the sitting president made it illegal to criticize him in print.

The law was passed under the guise of national security (sound familiar?), during a time of tension with France, but in practice, it was a blatant attempt to silence political opposition — especially the Democratic-Republicans, who were critical of Adams and the Federalists.

Journalists, editors, and even ordinary citizens were arrested and imprisoned simply for voicing dissent.

The Sedition Act sparked a firestorm, with critics — including Thomas Jefferson — calling it an existential threat to liberty.

When Jefferson won the presidency in 1800, he let the Act expire and pardoned those convicted under it.

This marked the first major instance of the U.S. government actively suppressing the press — not to protect the people, but to protect those in power.

In 1971, the Nixon administration’s Department of Justice tried to stop The New York Times — and later The Washington Post — from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a classified Department of Defense study that detailed decades of deception surrounding U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

The 7,000-page report exposed how multiple administrations, from Truman to Johnson, had systematically misled the public about the scope, strategy, and rationale for the war.

The documents were leaked by former military analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who believed the American people had a right to know the truth.

When The Times began publishing excerpts, the Nixon administration rushed to court, citing national security concerns and demanding an immediate injunction to block further reporting.

It was the first time in American history that the federal government tried to impose prior restraint — censorship before publication — on a major news outlet.

The case moved quickly to the Supreme Court, which ruled 6–3 in favor of the press.

Justice Hugo Black wrote in his concurring opinion: “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

The ruling was a landmark victory for the First Amendment and a resounding rejection of government secrecy disguised as security.

The Pentagon Papers were declassified in 2011.

In the early 2000’s, during the Iraq War, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld routinely favored certain media outlets while limiting press briefings to only friendly or mainstream organizations. Tough or critical questions were often deflected, and the Pentagon restricted access to data on civilian casualties, military failures, and internal dissent.

Meanwhile, the Department of Defense ran covert information campaigns in Iraq — even planting pro-U.S. stories in local papers — and deployed retired military analysts with Pentagon ties as “independent experts” across American television networks.

A 2008 New York Times investigation later revealed that the effort had been a coordinated campaign to shape public opinion — not an organic flow of information to the public, but a narrative carefully managed from the top down.

As conservatives, we’ve long pointed to the Iraq War and the broader failures of the Global War on Terror as cautionary tales. They serve as flashpoints when we demand that our government stop dragging us into forever wars and fueling the military-industrial complex.

It’s worth mentioning that Rumsfeld actually attempted Hegseth’s new press protocol back then, and eventually rescinded that decision — later apologizing to the press.

Knowledge I would’ve never known if I didn’t work at the Pentagon myself.

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It Ain’t All Bad

Now — to be clear — this Pentagon has accomplished incredible things and will continue to do so.

Much of the progress we’re seeing is because, for the first time in years, the military has an administration willing to green-light the good work — and get out of the way.

But there’s still this bizarre perception that “breaking news” has to mean bad news. That good reporting only counts if it exposes failure.

As a reporter, I can tell you that nothing excites me more than breaking good news — and I’ve done it, time and again. But that was before the new press protocols were put in place.

Since then, the opportunity to share the wins — let alone ask questions — has all but disappeared.

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Love Your Country, Not Your Government

I still believe in the America First movement.

I believe in strong borders, peace through strength, and fighting for the forgotten men and women of this country. But believing in those things doesn’t mean I stop asking questions when someone wearing a red tie starts making the same mistakes we called out under Obama or Biden.

This isn’t about left versus right.

It’s about us versus an institution that now demands our silence in exchange for access. *Cue the botched ‘influencer’ rollout of the Epstein Files at the White House earlier this year.*

And if we let it happen — to me, to anyone — then we’ve already lost what we set out to protect.

I thank God every single day for the time I had inside those walls.

That I served in these capacities before this job.

Because without it, I think I would’ve been like so many others on the outside — cheering on the restriction of the press, genuinely believing that journalists, that Americans, didn’t have the right to see what the DoD was doing.

I would’ve assumed the Pentagon needed to be locked down and silenced in the name of security — that there were just too many opportunities for the press to do bad things while being in there.

Seeing it all up close —it kept and keeps me grounded.

It saved me from burning down the very principles I, and so many others, stand for. Voted for.

Those ideals don’t disappear just because the press is annoying or inconvenient.

They don’t vanish just because we happen to like the people currently in power.

If anything, that’s when they matter most.

Many of the loudest critics of my last Substack — the one that sparked all this — are still leaning on perception instead of facts. Some think I “turned deep state.” That I somehow betrayed the movement or forgot what side I’m on.

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We Fight, Get Beat, Rise, and Fight Again

It’s up to us — always.

Trump won’t be here to save us from everything and anything.

We cannot get complacent and stop the spirit of holding government accountable, even when we celebrate an Administration… even when, do I dare say, we trust an Administration.

What is America after Trump?

What is America after us?

We must never lose that spirit.

We must never stop asking questions.

I love my country.

Even if that love cost me my job.

We always end my articles with a purposeful photo, so here's one of me on my very first day at the Pentagon.

Love & Liberty, Gabby