Mark Esper (26 April 1964-) was the United States Secretary of the Army from 20 November 2017 to 23 July 2019 (interrupting Ryan McCarthy's terms) and Secretary of Defense from 24 June to 15 July 2019 (succeeding Patrick M. Shanahan and preceding Richard V. Spencer) and from 23 July 2019 (succeeding Spencer).
Biography[]
Mark Thomas Esper was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in 1964, the son of a father of Lebanese descent and a mother of Irish descent; he was raised a Maronite Catholic. He served in the US Army from 1986 to 2007, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and serving in the Gulf War. He served as President of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, from 1996 to 1998 and also worked as a US Senate staffer from 1998 to 2002 and served in George W. Bush's administration. Esper became a defense contractor lobbyist, and, during Donald Trump's administration, he served as Secretary of the Army from 2017 to 2019, acting Secretary of Defense from June to July 2019, and Secretary of Defense from 23 July 2019, succeeding the ousted Jim Mattis. He fired Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer for his handling of the Eddie Gallagher war crimes case, but, during the George Floyd protests of 2020, Esper drew controversy for a 1 June 2020 statement to state governors in which he advised them to "mass and dominate the battlespace". He later went against Trump when Trump suggested that the Insurrection Act of 1807 should be employed to help deal with the protests in Washington DC, siding with several top generals in opposing the un-democratic proposition.