SAPR Defense Lawyer | Civilian Military Defense for SAPR Allegations

Few things destroy military careers faster than a SAPR or SHARP complaint. One allegation, one report, one text message, one misunderstanding, and suddenly your command knows, investigators may become involved, your security clearance may be at risk, your promotion may freeze, your peers may distance themselves, and your entire military future may suddenly feel uncertain. What many service members do not realize is this: not every SAPR or SHARP complaint becomes a court-martial, but almost every complaint creates danger. It creates career danger, administrative danger, investigative danger, reputational danger. And many military members make catastrophic mistakes before they even understand what kind of case they’re facing.

I’m Michael Waddington with Gonzalez & Waddington. I’m a criminal defense lawyer, court-martial attorney, been practicing military law for 25 years. And in this video, I want to explain what SAPR and SHARP complaints actually are, how these allegations evolve into investigations, how commands often react, what investigators look for, and how experienced civilian military defense lawyers defend service members facing these allegations. Because these cases often move far faster and become far more dangerous than people expect, it’s important that you listen carefully and take notes. And if you are in this situation, I recommend reaching out to either a civilian or an active duty military defense attorney.

Now, let’s talk about what SAPR and SHARP are. SAPR stands for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response. That is the Department of War’s framework addressing sexual assault allegations across the military. SHARP stands for Sexual Harassment Assault Response and Prevention. That term is primarily in the Army.

These programs were created to address sexual misconduct. Harassment, assault allegations, reporting systems, victim advocacy, and command response procedures. And over time, these systems have become deeply embedded into military culture, which means that commanders often react very aggressively once complaints emerge. Now, here’s something many military members misunderstand: a SAPR or SHARP complaint does not have to involve a criminal conviction to destroy your career. Now, that’s critical because some cases become courts-martial, some become CID investigations, NCIS investigations, OSI or CGIS investigations, or they go into the civilian criminal court system.

But many others that don’t go to that level become command-directed investigations, adverse administrative actions, GOMARS, or letters of reprimand from a general officer, or reprimands at a lower level. They often become no contact orders, security clearance problems, relief for cause actions, even demotions, and very commonly, Administrative Separation Boards or Boards of Inquiries. Either way, these are career-ending consequences. Also, they could end your promotion opportunities or schooling or advancement. And sometimes all of these things happen before criminal charges are even filed.

Now, let’s talk about how these cases usually begin. Sometimes there is a direct allegation of sexual assault. Sometimes it’s sexual harassment, sometimes inappropriate comments, workplace communications. Sometimes texts are being sent that are maybe sexual or flirtatious. Other times it starts on social media, either someone following someone, posting something, sharing something.

Very commonly, these things start with off-duty conduct or relationship fallout, even misunderstandings. We’ve had plenty of those where people assume or have a feeling that someone’s harassing them, and the other person has no idea that they’re doing anything wrong. And there’s even a question about whether what they were doing or saying is actually a crime, but it gets reported either way. Sometimes toxic relationships spiral into these allegations after an emotional clapserie, breakup or a divorce or child custody case. But in the end, it doesn’t matter.

They all end up in the same place. Once the allegation enters the system, the situation escalates very rapidly. Here’s another reality: commands are facing enormous pressure in these cases. Many times people get upset with their command because they feel they turned their back on them, but you have to understand the commander’s perspective. These commanders are being scrutinized by Congress, by Senate, by a bunch of watchdog organizations, by the media, by alleged victims, by a lot of different people.

They could even get passed over for promotion, be given letters of reprimand if they don’t handle these cases very aggressively. So it’s always good to understand the perspective, not that you agree with it, but that you understand the perspective of the command in these cases. In the current military, sexual misconduct allegations are taken extremely seriously. You have pressure from the public, from Congress, you have internal pressure from the organization itself. Often there’s media pressure, and then there’s internal command pressure.

So for example, if a general officer is hard and cracking down on any allegations, you could have an O-6, for example, that has looked at the allegation, doesn’t think it’s serious, could think it’s false or bogus, and they could be getting pressure from higher-up levels pushing down on them, trying to basically commit unlawful command influence. All of these things could exist at the same time as well. What does that mean for you if you’re under investigation? It means that there are people above you that are feeling intense pressure to act decisively once allegations surface, and they don’t want to look like they’re being soft on sexual assault.

They’re not supporting the SAP or the SHARP program. And what that ends up meaning for you is that they’re going to come down hard. It’s going to feel pretty ruthless, pretty relentless if you’re on the receiving end of an investigation, even if you’re not guilty. Now, there are false allegations. Depends on who you ask and whose opinion you get.

I’ll put it this way. After doing this for 25 years, there’s a substantial amount, in my opinion, of false or exaggerated allegations. Now, that doesn’t mean every allegation is false. It doesn’t mean that every investigation is unfair. Some people actually are guilty.

Some people committed the offenses. Many others didn’t. And then there’s that huge gray area in the middle where you have people caught up in allegations that are basically mischaracterized, that are false, or the person could actually believe that they were a victim when in fact legally they were not. Either way, if you’re being accused, you’re caught up in the middle of this and you’re stuck whether you’re guilty, you’re innocent, you’re falsely accused, or you’re the biggest offender in the world. You’re all stuck in the same crossfire, which is very difficult to get out of whether you’re guilty or not.

Service members must understand that if this SAPR SHARP system is activated against you, the wagons circle and they’re circling and you’re not on the inside. Whether you were a former commander, if you’re the Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine of the Year, it doesn’t matter. You’re on the outside. You are now the enemy in many ways, and they’re coming after you, and it’s not going to be pretty in many situations. Now, I want to talk about one of the biggest mistakes accused service members make.

They try to fix these situations emotionally. They try to deal with them emotionally, and they take it very, very personally. That is a mistake. It’s very hard to not take it personally, especially if you’re a super squared away service member and you feel like the system has betrayed you, but it’s not gonna help your situation. Many people panic.

They go on the internet, they start typing things in, looking things up. They start filing congressionals. Anything you write into your search engine, into AI searches, on Reddit, it could be potentially used against you if the government gets access to that. All those congressionals that you plan on filing, the IG complaints, the EO complaints, blasting everyone in your chain of command, I recommend you don’t do that. You need to get legal counsel, whether it’s a civilian lawyer or a military lawyer or both, as soon as possible so you don’t make mistakes that screw up your case going forward.

Other people, they’re like, hey, it was a misunderstanding. I’m just going to clear this up the old-fashioned way. I’m going to do what I’m taught in the military, have some integrity, take ownership. So they start sending apology texts. They’ll go confront the person who’s accusing them and start apologizing and asking for forgiveness and trying to talk it out.

Or they’ll start messaging on social media and sending emails or trying to clarify what actually happened and why the person misunderstood it. Or they get angry and they confront the person that way. Every one of these things I just described can and will have devastating effects later. Everything I just described, the apologies, the talking it out, it’s going to be twisted by some prosecutor and some investigator who thinks you’re guilty. From this point forward, just assume that they think you’re guilty because that’s how it is in almost every single case.

Anything you say or do can and it will be used against you. So shut your mouth. Don’t be sending anything. Don’t be doing anything. You need to talk to a lawyer.

I’m not saying this like, oh, come hire me, I’ll fix the situation. No. What I’m warning you is this: if you don’t get outside objective legal advice here, you could be walking right into a buzzsaw that you created and made much worse due to bad decision-making because of emotion or lack of knowing what’s going on. If you’re in this situation, clearly something has happened out there, even if it’s a false allegation that you don’t understand 100%. So, reacting emotionally is bad for you.

What do you need to do? Jocko, the Navy SEAL, always tells you, “Detach.” When you’re overwhelmed, detach, remove the emotion, analyze the situation, remain objective. That same thing applies in these situations because investigators love to analyze and twist your words, your timing, your posts, your emotional tone, your— quote demeanor. They do it all the time.

Hey, how did they react? What was his demeanor like? And the demeanor is never like, oh, he looked innocent. It’s always something like, oh, he seemed very guarded, very quiet, very sketchy. Whatever you do is going to be twisted against you.

And I’m not laughing about this because it’s funny. I’m laughing because I’ve seen it in every single case pretty much. They twist it against you. And I tell people this and they don’t believe me at the time. They’re like, no, no, It’s not going to be twisted like that.

Yes, it will be twisted like that. I’m doing this video because this is such a common thing that I think it’s something that should be put out there so people can learn from past experiences of other people and not make the same mistakes. Here’s another major thing that you need to be aware of. Sapper Sharp cases revolve heavily around digital forensic evidence or digital evidence, like text messages, Snapchat, Instagram, photos, location data, deleted messages, emails, all your social media communications, your likes, your shares, all of that stuff, even if you delete it, can be recovered if this escalates and if OSI, NCIS, CGIS, or CID get involved in the case.

They will get this stuff and they will recover deleted messages they will establish a timeline. And that timeline is being built to show how you’re guilty, how the evidence fits in. Now, timelines are important for the defense too, but timelines are very important for prosecutors and the OSTC. And whether it’s a court-martial, a board, or whatever they’re doing against you, they will build a timeline. And that timeline often conflicts with your timeline, Often it conflicts with the truth because they’re only looking at things that prove your guilt.

So remember this, modern military sexual misconduct investigations are often digital evidence investigations. Now that includes evidence that’s given to them by the alleged victim. That evidence is almost always cherry-picked and it’s allowed to happen. If you were to hand over 50 messages and delete 100, that’ll be used against you. You’re hiding evidence, you’re obstructing justice.

The alleged victims are allowed to do this. They do it all the time. They do it with the prosecutors. They do it with CID, NCIS, with the investigators. They do it through their victims’ counsel.

And it’s a way for them to get around obstruction of justice. They do it through their victims’ counsel or through the SAPR, SHARP Victim Advocate, and they give them what they want to have sent on so that they can have deniability. Like, well, I gave them what I thought was relevant, or they never asked for everything. That basically means they handed over evidence that’s cherry-picked and that is bad for you but good for them. So they basically hide evidence, hand over evidence that makes you look guilty, because that’s what military sexual assault investigators are looking for anyway.

They very rarely look for evidence to show your innocence. If you don’t believe me, come watch a court-martial any day, any time. It’s going to be the same thing over and over again. Context matters enormously in any type of sexual relationship, anything from a dating relationship to a hookup to a marriage. Context matters.

Anytime you send a text message, it’s a snapshot. So without all the context, things are twisted and things are misinterpreted and things can be completely wrong unless you have context. But you must preserve your messages because often the only context we have is what you preserved. One screenshot does not tell the whole story. It can tell a story they want to tell, but if you go out there and delete evidence and obstruct justice, we’re pretty much stuck with whatever the victims have put together along with their victim’s lawyer, who basically acts as a co-conspirator when it comes to obstructing justice.

Now, those are harsh words to say against another lawyer, but I will tell you, in many of my cases, the victim counsel plays a role in shielding, hiding, and filtering evidence so that the whole picture doesn’t come out. And every time it happens, they’re doing it to the disadvantage of the accused. When they hide evidence or allow their alleged victim to delete evidence, which if I did that, I would lose my bar licenses if I was destroying evidence and hiding stuff and telling people to destroy evidence. I can’t do that. I’m not going to do that.

But victims’ lawyers do that stuff all the time. So what does this mean for you? It means that if you don’t have a lawyer, a civilian military defense counsel who knows a lot about digital forensic evidence, who knows a lot about the SAPR SHARP program, who has done hundreds of these cases, then you’re going to be in a world of hurt. If you get some brand new lawyer They might have a big heart. They might really want to fight for you.

They might be a really cool person to hang out with. But if they don’t have hundreds of cases under their belt in dealing with this crap, then you’re going to be in a world of hurt. I know you got to pay civilian lawyer. That’s a topic of another video, how to do that. But the point is, I get so many people call me after the fact.

They went about this on their own. They went with their free lawyer. They didn’t have a lawyer. They went with the cheapest lawyer they could find. Sometimes they don’t even have military experience.

These lawyers, these people hire, and they get burned. There’s no guarantee that if you get a top-notch civilian military defense lawyer, then everything’s going to be great. There’s no guarantee. But I will guarantee this: if you have someone who’s done 200 sexual assault cases versus someone who’s done 3 or 4, you’re going to have a difference in performance. It’s like if you’re going to find and put together a team of people to raid a heavily guarded compound.

Yes, you could go with someone fresh out of basic training or a brand new lieutenant fresh out of ROTC. They might even do a decent job. That person might get mowed down just because they don’t have the experience clearing rooms, breaching doors, things like that. Now, by no means am I a door kicker or a professional killer, because I’m not. Those folks fight to defend the Constitution on the battlefield.

I do it in the courtroom. But just like those folks practice breaching, clearing rooms, shooting on a daily basis, me and my law partner, we practice cross-examination, closing arguments, interrogating witnesses, how to expose someone who deleted evidence, dealing with sexual assault nurse examiners, forensic pathologists, digital experts, uncovering evidence that law enforcement missed or destroyed or let spoiled. That’s one of the benefits of having an experienced civilian military defense counsel. You need someone who knows how to recover messages if possible, how to do forensic analysis. You need someone who can work with an expert, but you also— it would be good to have someone who knows how to deal with digital forensics.

Like, literally, my wife Alexandra, she’s my law partner, we’ve been married for 28 years, we wrote the go-to book that’s sold out there to lawyers across the country on cross-examining folks when it comes to digital forensic evidence. We wrote the book on how to cross-examine and expose digital forensics experts. But the bottom line is we know how to defend these cases. So why would you go with a civilian military defense lawyer if you’re accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault? You do have the right to a free military lawyer, and many military defense counsel, the ones on active duty, work extremely hard and they’re very good lawyers.

But I will tell you, what does a civilian military defense counsel— I’ll speak for myself and my law partner. We have decades of experience specialized in courts-martial, sexual assault defense. That’s really what we’ve spent the past 20— me, 25 years. My law partner, my wife, 23 years of her life doing on a daily basis. We’re independent.

We don’t work for the command. I’m not afraid of the command. I’ve cross-examined people who are commanders of DEVGRU, SEAL Team 6, to general officers, to Green Berets, to wing commanders, to squadron commanders. I do it all the time. I might have to expose, you know, an E-9 who is up there testifying against my client, expose them for lying, for misinterpreting things, for whatever they did wrong.

I have to expose them and cross-examine them. I’ve cross-examined hundreds of trained law enforcement experts like CID and CIS. Another thing we bring to the table is we have additional resources and tools that we can use, especially with the technology that’s out there right now that’s available to us that is not available to the free military lawyers. We have forensic experts that we’ve worked with for decades, that we have close personal relationships with, professional relationships with, some of the top people in this country, people you see on TV involved in the big cases. I am either friends with or professionally affiliated with a lot of these people.

I teach at conferences with them. I can get on a phone call if I need one of them and have them respond to me, often in a matter of minutes. We also have access to outside investigative resources if it’s necessary and appropriate for the case. Now, often that costs more money if we’re going to get a team of investigators involved, but that’s something that we can do. In terms of digital forensic evidence, we have people on speed dial who can have your phone recovered, preserved, and extracted, even if you deleted stuff.

It depends on the phone, obviously, depends on the facts, but we have people that can get that done very quickly. On top of that, we have decades of trying cases and teaching these skills to lawyers across the country. Now, some of the things that I’ve been focused on since I’ve been a military lawyer going back to 2001, is Article 120 cases. I’ve done probably more Article 120 cases than any other type of case. Now, there’s different subsections of those, but I do them a lot.

On top of that, I’ve done murder, war crimes, white-collar, you name it. I’ve done many, many SAPR investigations, dealt with many, many hundreds of SHARP complaints, SAPR investigations, and I know how to win these credibility battles. Like, myself and my law partner and other civilian military defense lawyers, we tend to focus intensely on cross-examination. That is, for like an infantryman, shooting, calling in air support, now working with drones, doing all those sorts of things to kill the enemy— that’s what they do. What I do is I cross-examine.

I am an expert in cross-examination. I’ve taught it probably 30, 40 times in the past 10 years to lawyers across the country, and I’ve written 9 books on trial advocacy, cross-examination, and military defense and sexual assault. I’m also an expert in investigative failures. That’s a huge thing we do. We look at what an investigator did do.

If they did what they should have done, what evidence we would have had. And that’s how we create reasonable doubt in many cases. I also have written and taught extensively and cross-examined extensively on false allegations. The dynamics of that, who makes false allegations, how to set them up on the witness stand and impeach them and expose them as a liar, as well as litigation and trial strategy. I’ve written multiple books on trial strategy.

Now, how do we defend these cases? First of all, we detach. We remain objective. I don’t assume anything. The person who’s calling me on the phone, you could be guilty, you could be innocent, you could be completely framed.

I don’t know that. I don’t assume that. That’s not my job. My job is to come in and listen, gather information, and come up with a plan to help you get out of this situation if possible with the least amount of damage to your life, to your career, to your family, to reputation, to everything. Now, sometimes we can do that pretty easily.

Sometimes it is a long, drawn-out fight that lasts years. The other thing we don’t do is panic. I’m telling you, I had to literally take on the entire team of SEAL Team 6 operators in a case I was doing when I was defending a SEAL Team 6 operator, and they brought their O-6 commander in. No one tells him no, and he tried to steamroll me, and I had to cross-examine these people and expose them on the witness stand, and they were pissed. But I can’t be doing that if I’m panicking, if I’m worried, if I’m some neurotic person.

I’m not. I fought many of these cases. I stay cool, calm, collected, and we take the battle to our opponent. We like to collect and analyze actual evidence, not assumptions, not ROIs that are speculative. That means we objectively analyze interviews, statements, text messages.

That can include what’s in there and what’s not in there. We can sometimes tell when OSI is telling them what to write. I could tell a lot of times if the statement was written by CID and then they tell the person just sign below. We could also tell if the witness is being coached in many cases. Another big thing we do is develop digital timelines in a timeline of the entire case, ’cause everything fits into these timelines.

It’s crucial to have a timeline from the beginning. On top of that, we then plug in what witnesses are necessary. Now, a lot of our cases, we have the client come forward and their family, like they give us all these names and they want us to go put on this case to prove the person’s innocence. You are presumed innocent. Now, if you do your case right, you will teach the jury that there’s a presumption of innocence.

The judge will tell them that. And then you win your case by attacking, through your lawyers obviously, the weaknesses in the government’s case. The government’s job is to prove you’re guilty. Our job is not to prove your innocence. It is to blow up their case, to destroy their case.

Another thing we have to look at is command actions, things that are done also by prosecutors and the OSTC people. We look at prior relationship dynamics. I think there’s a story behind every case. That’s one of the first things I do is I want to get the story. Whether you talk to me or my law partner, Alexandra, we interview you In the beginning, like on the consult even, we’re figuring out what’s the story.

Often it’s not even what you’re telling us the story is. We figure out what the story is by asking questions and trying to understand what your perspective is, but also not just taking everything you say at face value, collecting it objectively and starting to formulate a theory of the defense. That’s what the story is. They’ll often say, “Oh, this person committed this crime,” and they have this real cookie-cutter approach in most of these cases. Our story is often based on all the evidence, on personal dynamics, on what was said or what wasn’t said, on what was going on behind the scenes, on people’s personalities.

We come up with the best story to tell. Another thing that’s important in a Sapper Sharp allegation, it’s credibility. And credibility cases are complicated. These cases often come down to who’s more credible. That includes the lawyers.

Includes the witnesses. It includes you, the person accusing you. A lot of times people remember things differently. It’s not that they’re deliberately lying. Some people perceive events differently.

Some people are biased in one way where someone else might not be as biased. And all these factors, biases, and life experiences play a role in how you remember things, how you tell the story. Our job is to cut through all that crap. Alcohol is another major issue that comes up in these cases. People remember things differently or don’t remember accurately often when they’re drinking.

That includes the victim and that includes you. So we have to understand that and understand the forensics and the physiological impacts of alcohol in a Sapper or Sharp case. Relationships. Again, we talked about that, but the relationships matter. When I ask someone, “Tell me who this person is.

How do you know them?” I don’t want to hear just, “Oh, I met him on Tinder,” and they stop talking. No, I wanna know the whole story. What did they say? What was the first interaction like?

We’re not trying to be politically correct here. We’re trying to figure out who the person making the allegation is, who you are, how all the people play a role in this, and how to tell this and turn this into a story and how to tell the story. Personality disorders, borderline personality disorder, people with mental health issues, narcissists, those also play a role. These types of toxic individuals, and they often are toxic, have a tendency to make these allegations for payback, for revenge, maybe because they misinterpreted something, maybe because they’re emotionally unstable. You have to also understand that if you’re a lawyer evaluating the case, and you have to know what you’re talking about.

My wife and I, Alexandra, literally wrote a book for lawyers called Exposing Toxic Manipulators. It breaks down the most common types of psychological profiles that make false or exaggerated allegations. And it talks about how to disarm them, how to expose them, and how to deal with them in court to get the upper hand. At the same time, though, you also have to understand that investigators are trying to reconstruct their version, but their version is always this: believe the victim. Sapper sharp, they always believe the victim.

They start by believing, which means if they believe the victim, then what? You’re guilty from the start. Even CID, Army CID’s new policy is they are a victim-centered investigative agency, They start by believing. They’ll even admit that on the witness stand, which is funny because they’ll say, oh, I have to be fair, neutral, detached, unbiased. And then we cross-examine them and they have to admit that, well, they started by believing the victim.

And if you start by believing the victim, then you have a very lopsided investigation, which if you know what you’re doing, you can easily attack those investigations and expose them. Next thing I want to talk about is administrative consequences. Many people think, well, if I can avoid a court-martial, it’s all done, it’s great, my career is saved. Not so fast. The idea in the past, if I can avoid a court-martial, then I’m safe, does not apply post-2020.

It’s a wrong thing to be thinking, and I’ll tell you why. Even without a conviction, service members, not every once in a while, but very commonly, let’s say 60 to 80% of the time, if the allegation cannot be proven in a court-martial beyond a reasonable doubt, or if there’s a declination to prosecute, or the OSTC declines, you don’t just sail off into the sunset. In some jurisdictions, it’s almost 100% there’s going to be something administrative, whether you’re guilty or not. And this is what really kills people that are innocent. It kills their careers, and it can leave a lasting, long-term negative impact on them and their life and their career.

You could be looking at administrative separation or a BOI, loss of promotion, that’s almost guaranteed, relief for cause from leadership, a bad NCOER, EPR, or whatever your evaluation is called in your branch. You can be hit with excessive no contact orders. You can be transferred to some random place to do a job that you weren’t trained to do. Like, I’ve had clients who were sent down to the motor pool and told to like sit in the corner and look busy when the person’s a pilot. Or an intelligence analyst or someone in cyber warfare, now they’re sitting down at the motor pool or at the gymnasium handing out basketballs.

Now, if that’s your job to hand out basketballs, that’s great. Or if your job is to work in the motor pool, that’s great. But if your job is to fly a fighter plane or to do something like be a doctor or nurse or do something that requires certain certifications, and they tell you to go sit down in the gym or mow the lawn for the next 2 years, You can imagine what that does to your career. Even if your name is cleared, you could end up losing your security clearance— very common— and they could take your retirement if they kick you out. You could have 22 years in and get kicked out of the military with no retirement, with an other than honorable discharge, based on a flimsy investigation, based on a flimsy allegation that never went to court-martial.

Even if you never got an NJP, Article 15, or captain’s mast. Another very common thing is to get a letter of reprimand. They’ll throw that in there, and then that’s now in your official file. That it’ll say something like, you are being reprimanded because you sexually assaulted and committed abusive sexual contact against fill in the blank. They’ll put that in your file.

So when you go apply for jobs or go back to school to get a master’s degree or something, and they ask about any discipline, you’re going to have to give them a reprimand from a general or an admiral saying you raped somebody. That’s not career enhancing, okay? That can basically screw you without any due process for the rest of your life. What do you need to do psychologically? You need to be prepared mentally.

You have to have a warrior mentality, not a victim mentality. I tell people this all the time. I don’t want any victim clients, okay? I don’t care if they’re screwing you over left and right. Your victim mentality needs to stop.

‘Cause you cannot win and I can’t help you as much as possible if you’re sitting around whining and complaining. Now I know you could be completely getting railroaded, screwed over, but you cannot have that mindset. You have to be very stoic. You focus on what you can control. That starts with your emotions.

It starts with whether you get a lawyer or not. It starts with whether or not you’re blasting apology letters out in social media and email. If you’re stoic, you remain quiet, focused on what you can control. Get a lawyer, get a civilian defense counsel or military lawyer as soon as possible and start strategizing. You will lose sleep, I promise you.

You will be scared. You’re gonna be waking up in the middle of the night. You’re gonna be maybe either gaining weight or losing weight. You’re gonna feel like a cloud is over you. That’s very natural.

There’s nothing we can do about that. But I tell you, to alleviate that, if you stay focused and driven, have legal counsel, basically your bodyguard, you keep working out, You stay with the friends who support you, you keep your mouth shut. It puts you in the best position possible and keep doing the best job possible. I don’t care if they have you shoveling shit down at the horse stables. You do the best job you can.

You be the best shit shoveler in the United States Army kennel. We can then use those people to help you down the road if this ends up at a board or a court-martial. So obsessing over everything, getting on ChatGPT, catastrophizing on ChatGPT or AI about everything that could happen. Yeah, the worst that could happen is you end up in jail sex offender, you lose everything. Just take ownership of that.

That could be the worst thing, but it also could be that nothing happens, that you fight your way out of this. If you keep the best attitude possible and focus on what you can control and not catastrophize or think of all the worst-case scenarios, most of those things will be in your mind. I will tell you, many, many people I’ve defended, the worst-case scenario is often the least likely. Now, there are those who do stupid things like commit a crime, go confess to it, you know, do a polygraph, fail the polygraph, confess to it again, hand over their phone which has incriminating evidence. Now, if you do something like that, then it kind of limits what I can do.

I could still get you the best result possible, but if you make a bunch of terrible decisions and screw your case completely, it kind of boxes us in with what we can do. Now, we can still try to get a great outcome. And we’ve gotten some wonderful outcomes when the evidence was overwhelming. But please don’t do those things. It puts you and us in a tough situation.

When we get involved in a case, no matter what decisions you’ve done, like I said, we detach and we’re objective. We want to stabilize the situation. We want to protect whatever evidence we do have, we can control or find. We want to control the communications. We want to limit your exposure.

And prevent panic-driven mistakes. You don’t have to listen to us if you hire us, but I would recommend you do, okay? Because our job is saving lives. So here’s one of the biggest things that I want to just warn you about, and I hear this all the time from family members, from people who are innocent even. They’ll say, “Oh, the truth will save me.

I just want to get the truth out.” No, that’s not true. Truth matters. In the perfect world, truth matters. When they presume you’re guilty, when they assume you’re guilty, and they’re going to try to use everything you say against you, Your truth will be twisted if they can, or ignored.

Truth matters enormously, but strategy matters more because investigators will be looking into different narratives. They’ll be interpreting evidence differently, often against you. They’ll be analyzing your credibility. They never look at the victim’s credibility or look at anything bad the victim’s done. They’re going to be building up witnesses to say you’re a liar.

You had a motive, you’re a criminal, you’re a pervert, whatever it is, they’re going to be looking at your credibility. They will be building digital timelines, and then, like I said early on, there’s institutional pressure, and many good people accidentally damage their defense before they even understand the battlefield. So if you take nothing from this video, remember this: SAPR and SHARP complaints are not just simple human resources HR issues. They can become criminal investigations, administrative separation actions, security clearance problems. They could take your retirement and end your career very quickly.

The early stages matter enormously. Preserving texts, not doing interviews, saving text, phone evidence, and not providing incriminating information to the government, limiting command interactions, and staying unemotional. All of that matters. My name is Michael Waddington, a civilian military defense lawyer. I’m with the law firm of Gonzalez & Waddington.

Been doing this now for 25 years, defending and saving service members’ lives, many of whom are charged with SAPR allegations, SHARP complaints, Article 120 cases, all types of military investigations, whether it’s CID, NCIS, OSI, or CGIS. I’ve done hundreds of courts-martial, many, many hundreds of administrative actions, and many administrative separation boards. So remember this: if you’re in trouble, you need some advice, reach out for a free consultation. We do free consultations. We let you know whether we can help you or not, what it would cost, and kind of maybe give you some idea of what the future looks like.

If there’s any hope, what are your chances? We’re not going to sugarcoat it. But we will listen to you and do the free consultation and see if we’re a good fit. Remember, in military sexual misconduct investigations, the biggest mistakes are often made long before anyone steps into a courtroom. If you like our videos and our content, please click like, subscribe, and share.

Until next time, I’m Michael Waddington.