John Phelan is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of the Navy^[1], the first service leadership position that the incoming administration has announced as it prepares to put its stamp on the military.

In a post to his social media site^[2], Truth Social, Trump said that he is naming Phelan, a financier who appears to have no military experience or experience working on military policy and has never worked for a large defense contractor, to lead the Navy.

The Navy secretary serves as the civilian leader of the military's second-largest branch and is responsible for the health and well-being of more than 1 million sailors, Marines, reservists and civilian personnel, as well as managing an annual budget of more than $250 billion while ensuring the Navy is able to execute critical national security missions.

Read Next: Marine Corps Worried About How to Move and Supply Troops After Navy Sidelines 17 Support Ships^[3]

Phelan was a massive donor to Trump and Republicans in 2024.

Federal Election Commission records show that, among his many political contributions, Phelan donated $834,600 to Trump's joint fundraising committee in April. Days after the election, on Nov. 10, he would donate another $93,300, records show.

Phelan also donated $371,700 to the Republican National Committee and another $370,000 to 37 different Republican state committees all on a single day in April.

Phelan hosted Trump at one of his homes for a private fundraiser over the summer where, according to The Guardian^[4], the then-candidate for president went on a expletive-laced rant about immigration and threatened that the 2024 election "could be the last election we ever have" if Vice President Kamala Harris won.

While it is not unusual for service secretaries to have been major fundraisers or donors prior to assuming their duties, what is unusual about Phelan is his lack of any military experience.

The last Navy secretary to have no connection to the military was Donald Winter, who served in the George W. Bush administration from 2006 to 2009. However, Winter's resume included work for the Pentagon and top defense contractors. Before being selected for the job, Winter was the head of a branch of Northrop Grumman, one of the top 10 largest defense contractors used by the Pentagon.

"John will be a tremendous force for our naval service members and a steadfast leader in advancing my America First vision," Trump said in his statement, adding that Phelan "will put the business of the U.S. Navy above all else."

Trump boasted about Phelan's work in running a private investment firm for Michael Dell, the founder of the computing giant Dell Technologies and argued that "his record of success speaks for itself."

In addition to his work in finance, Phelan is a well-known art collector^[5], appearing on ARTnews' Top 200 collectors list in 2024.

Since the beginning of the modern structure of the Defense Department following World War II, only five of the 28 confirmed Navy secretaries had no military or government service in their past.

Of those five, one secretary -- Gordon England -- had been a top executive at General Dynamics and Lockheed before being named to the top Navy job. His nomination and service came under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who was a proponent of picking people with CEO experience^[6] to run the services. However, those choices were controversial at the time, and one of his picks for Army secretary ended up being blocked by the Senate.

In addition to his work as an investment banker, Phelan sits on the board^[7] of the nonprofit organization "Spirit of America" which, according to its website^[8], is a nonpartisan organization that is "recognized by Congress" and has "an agreement with the Department of Defense that allows U.S. troops to collaborate with us to build goodwill and deliver assistance at scale."

"We fill the gaps between what government can do and what is needed," the site says.

Trump's move to tap Phelan to helm the Navy comes on the heels of another unorthodox pick -- Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, for secretary of defense. While Hegseth's 13-year stint as an infantry officer in the National Guard^[9] gives him some military bona fides, his lack of defense policy chops or experience in large-scale military planning has drawn scrutiny. The pick does, however, underscore Trump's key campaign promise for disruption. Hegseth has also faced scrutiny for a sexual assault allegation from 2017^[10] that could see center stage during his confirmation hearing.

How Trump has selected his military leaders so far underscores his instincts to favor loyalty and media savvy over traditional qualifications for key positions. Hegseth has been a staunch defender of Trump on Fox News and has positioned himself as a culture warrior. He has frequently lambasted the services for allowing women in combat-arms roles and wrote that the military has turned off "young, patriotic, Christian men" in a book he published last summer.

Meanwhile, Trump has also selected Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, where she would oversee the CIA, National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies. Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army^[11] Reserve, is currently the commander of 1st Battalion, 354th Regiment, a drill sergeant unit.

Related: Thousands of Women Serve in Combat Roles. Pentagon Nominee Hegseth Says They Shouldn't.^[12]

Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump's pick^[1] to lead the Department of Defense, sat in front of a screen with the headline: “Study Disproves Military Extremism Problem.”

It was Jan. 4 of this year and Hegseth told a Fox News audience the new study proved that the number of military service members and veterans involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection^[2] did not indicate a wider problem in the armed forces. The Pentagon-funded report to which Hegseth referred said there was no evidence the number of violent extremists in the military was “disproportionate to extremists in the general population.”

“They knew this was a sham,” Hegseth said, referring to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other military leaders. “Then they do the study, which confirms what we all know.”

Hegseth, who was working for Fox News at the time and had no involvement in the report, wasn’t alone. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page highlighted the same report^[3] as evidence that extremists in military communities were “phantoms” created by a “false media narrative.” The X account for Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee posted that the study showed the focus on extremism in the military was a “witch hunt.”

But The Associated Press has found that the study, “Prohibited Extremist Activities in the U.S. Department of Defense” conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses^[4], relied on old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence that pointed to the opposite conclusion.

In fact, the AP found that the IDA report’s authors did not use newer data that was offered to it, and instead based one of its foundational conclusions on Jan. 6 arrest figures that were more than two years out of date by the time of the report’s public release.

As a result, the report grossly undercounted the number of military and veterans arrested for the Jan. 6 attack and provided a misleading picture of the severity of the growing problem, the AP has found.

Spike in military extremism 

The number of service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country. Yet their impact can be large.

Ordered by Austin after the Jan. 6 insurrection, the IDA research was published quietly just before Christmas 2023 — nearly 18 months late and with no announcement. Its key recommendation: the DOD should “not overreact and draw too large of a target” in its anti-extremism efforts, despite Austin’s promise to attack the problem head-on in the wake of Jan. 6.

But IDA’s researchers based a key finding on an undercount of military service members and veterans who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The IDA — a longtime partner to the Pentagon that has received more than a billion dollars in contracts over the past decade to provide research and strategic consulting to the nation’s military — based this conclusion on arrests made as of Jan. 1, 2022, the year immediately following the attack. As of that date, 82 of the 704 people arrested had military backgrounds, or 11.6% of the total arrests, IDA reported.

But in the months and years that followed, the number of arrestees with a military background nearly tripled.

IDA’s report states that its research was conducted from June 2021 through June 2022. By June 2022, the number of active or former military members arrested had grown by nearly 50%, according to the same dataset IDA cited from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. When IDA’s report was published a year and a half later, in December 2023, 209 people with military backgrounds who attended the insurrection had been arrested, or 15.2% of all arrests.

That has since grown to 18%, according to data collected by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. It represents a significant statistical increase, and rises above the general population estimates IDA cited among its reasoning for recommending the Pentagon not overreact. START’s research was also funded by DOD, and other federal agencies.

More broadly, as the AP reported in an investigation published last month^[5], more than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to data collected and analyzed by START. Though those numbers reflect a small fraction of those who have served in the military — and Austin, the current defense secretary, has said that extremism is not widespread in the U.S. military — AP’s investigation found^[6] that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties.

The IDA’s 199-page report conceded that there was “some indication” that the radicalization numbers in the veterans community could be “slightly higher and may be growing” but said its review found “no evidence” that was the case among active duty troops.

In fact, data show that since 2017 both service members and veterans are radicalizing at a faster rate than people without military training. Less than 1% of the adult population is currently serving in the U.S. military, but active duty military members make up a disproportionate 3.2% of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.

Even that number is thought to be an undercount, according to Michael Jensen, START’s lead researcher. He noted that the military uses administrative discharges to quietly remove extremists from the ranks — such cases do not show up in START’s data because the military does not release information about them.

Jensen, who was consulted by IDA for its report and is cited in it 24 times, said using the Jan. 6 arrest data alone, even if calculated correctly, was not a valid approach to measuring extremism among active duty military.

“J6 is an absolutely terrible event to use to try to estimate the scope of extremism in the active service population since most active services members would not have had the opportunity to participate in that event even if they wanted to,” Jensen said.

Jensen’s observation is underscored by records obtained by AP. One complaint filed to the DOD Inspector General’s whistleblower hotline on March 17, 2021, and obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, said an active duty service member in Germany^[7] expressed an interest in heading to Washington for Jan. 6, but said he wasn’t able to go because of his military service.

Screenshots from Facebook provided with the complaint show he told his cousin, “I would join you but my current tour is in Germany,” and said in another post on Jan. 3, 2021, he was considering buying a plane ticket. The complaint said the servicemember’s cousin was later arrested.

An IDA spokesman defended the report, for which he said the company was paid $900,000, saying it remains confident that its findings were “solidly based on the best data available at the time the work was conducted.” The AP reached out by email and LinkedIn messages to several people listed as authors of the report. None provided comment. A defense official said the department “is committed to maintaining high standards for its data collection and transparency” and referred specific questions on the methodology and analysis of the report to IDA.

Hegseth and Trump’s transition team did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Bad data, false assertions 

IDA’s researchers were offered START’s data, Jensen said, which is widely considered the most comprehensive look at the issue. IDA’s report even called it “perhaps the best effort to date” in collecting data on extremists in the military. But IDA never followed up to get it, he said.

“We showed them data from over 30 years when they visited with us, so they knew the data were out there to look at a longer timespan,” Jensen said. “We offered it, and offered to help in any other way we could, but we never heard from them again after our one and only meeting.”

The IDA spokesperson said its researchers relied on reports START published that summarized parts of their data through 2021. Those reports and the data that underlie them all found “a significant uptick” in such cases, but IDA failed to note those findings in its conclusions.

And in some parts of the report, IDA cited START’s numbers from 2018, which were by then years out of date, and which did not fully reflect a significant increase that began the previous year. A footnote says there is more recent data, but fails to mention Jensen’s offer to provide access.

AP also found several instances where IDA made assertions that were factually inaccurate or incomplete, leading to questions about the rigor of its work, and about whether the Pentagon provided adequate access to information.

As one example, IDA states that “IDA found no evidence of participation in violent extremist events by DOD civilians or defense contractor employees.”

But AP obtained records showing multiple allegations about Jan. 6 alone against contractors and a civilian employee.

One, made to the Inspector General’s office on Jan 8, 2021, nearly three years before the report was published, said a contractor at the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center^[8] called in to meetings from the protest on Jan. 6, and had spread conspiracy theories including QAnon as well as others involving artificial intelligence and the DOD. This complaint resulted in the contractor’s termination.

In addition, there were widely publicized cases of defense contractors who were accused of participating in Jan. 6, including a Navy contractor^[9] who was a Nazi sympathizer and a former Special Forces soldier^[10] who was a military contractor.

And in one of the most notable violent extremist events in the years prior to Jan. 6, a defense contractor with a security clearance^[11] participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Michael Miselis, a member of the violent white supremacist group Rise Above Movement, pleaded guilty to federal rioting charges^[12].

The cases together raise questions about the rigor of the IDA’s report and why it would make such assertions. IDA did not explain why it missed those widely reported cases.

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism^[13], said the AP’s review showed the IDA report was “a mess,” with “bad data, unsubstantiated conclusions, and false assertions.”

That Hegseth, a former National Guardsman who himself had been flagged as a potential insider threat^[14] for a tattoo on his bicep that has been linked to extremist groups, doesn’t see the importance of rooting out extremism in the ranks is a disaster, she said.

“It’s a shame that a shoddy report by the Pentagon gives an opening to views like Hegseth’s and will perpetuate a head-in-the-sand approach to a serious national security issue,” said Beirich, an expert in extremist movements who has testified before Congress about extremism in the military.

“Too many terrorist attacks have been perpetrated by active-duty military and veterans, and ignoring this problem just makes the American people less safe,” she said. “Making light of the problem is ultimately a threat to the security of the American people, and politicizing the problem, which Republicans have done over recent years, means more violence.”

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Aaron Kessler contributed reporting from Washington.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.^[15]