Chuck Grassley: Leaders 'gutted' efforts to change military sexual assault prosecutions

A last-minute change by Congressional committee chairs "gutted" legislation that would change how military sexual assaults are prosecuted, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley said Wednesday.

Grassley, a Republican who is seeking reelection next year, has worked for years with a bipartisan group of senators on legislation to remove sexual assault prosecutions from the military chain of command. This year's annual National Defense Authorization Act — the country's military funding bill — includes a deal struck by U.S. House and Senate leaders that waters down that legislation.

"The decision makers on the defense bill still, on this subject, don’t want to go far enough to bring the justice that sexual assault victims deserve," Grassley said in a news conference Wednesday morning with a bipartisan group of senators. "They’ve gutted our sexual assault provisions."

Grassley: 'It still gives the commanding officer ... too much authority'

The proposal included in the military funding bill would task independent military lawyers with prosecuting sexual assault cases. That would remove the authority from commanders, who are typically not lawyers, to make decisions on charging and trying their own troops.

But a group of senators, including Grassley and Iowa's junior U.S. Senator, Joni Ernst, and Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said the changes do not go far enough to remove authority from commanders.

"It still gives the commanding officer of the unit too much authority," Grassley told reporters on a call Wednesday morning. "Now, he has less authority than he does under present law, but still we should take this entirely out of the chain of command and this compromise that’s been foisted on Gillibrand and me doesn’t do enough in that direction."

More: The military has vowed to curb sexual assault for decades to no avail. Now, Congress is stepping in.

Their legislation would go further, by creating teams of independent military prosecutors with discretion to charge 38 serious crimes, including murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. Their version also would have removed commanders' authority to convene courts and create the pool of potential jurors, while the measure included in the funding bill does neither.

"This bill does not reform the military justice system in a way that will truly help survivors get justice," Gillibrand said at the news conference. "It does not remove serious crimes out of the chain of command, which is the only way to create the professional, unbiased system that we have been advocating for."

Ernst: 'We'll continue that fight'

Ernst, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard and a survivor of sexual assault, said she was disappointed not to have every aspect of the bill included in the funding legislation. But she pointed to the version that's in the bill as progress.

"We’ve made a lot of progress, probably some of the most important progress, most momentous progress that we have seen ever in our history of the Uniform Code of Military Justice," she said. "But we still have a number of steps to go. And we’ll continue that fight."

Grassley said he was frustrated by the process through which the legislation was changed when it was added to the military funding bill. Committee leaders did not go through a normal hearing process but struck a deal behind closed doors.

"You’ve got a handful of people in the Congress overriding the 66 members of the Senate and 220 members of the House of Representatives," he said, referring to the supporters of the standalone legislation.

What happens next

Gillibrand said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, both Democrats, have said they support holding a vote on the standalone version of the legislation. Previous efforts to bring the bill to a vote have been blocked by Sens. Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. They support the more limited change that is also favored by the Pentagon.

Grassley and the other senators said they would continue to work to bring their bill up for a vote in the Senate.

"I’m not going to quit fighting for military justice until this whole job is done," he said.

USA Today contributed to this article.

Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Grassley criticizes changes to military sexual assault prosecutions