“It’s a harsh result from a financial perspective…but he owns what he did.”It’s the third and final legal hurdle, after the government abandoned two previous attempts to bring cases against Bissonnette—including one that Luskin said accused him of violating the espionage act by allegedly disclosing classified information in “The government came back to us in August 2015 to say they were closing the investigation and made determination that he didn’t violate criminal law,” Luskin said.They also declined to prosecute Bissonnette in a second case that accused him of profiting illegally when he was paid as a consultant to a video game company, while he was still on active duty at the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, also known as SEAL Team Six.Bissonnette is pushing ahead with a legal case of his own, against the original former special operations attorney who advised him that he didn’t need to seek a pre-publication review from the Pentagon. Matt received his bachelors degree in 1998 and upon graduating from college, enlisted in the Navy to pursue his dream of serving his country as a Navy SEAL. For four years, they looked into every little thing. I still use the name Mark Owen, and make people call me Mark at speaking events.”And he’s continued to volunteer for charities, including being one of the guest special operators competing at “Bissonnette said the people who count to him haven’t shut him out.“The ones I hang out with have always been my friends, and they are still my friends,” he said.“Every knucklehead who goes on TV…and goes on about me violating a code, I’ve never met.”He is hoping any lasting stigma will fade with the conclusion of his legal troubles, especially with so many other SEALs now profiting from their time in service, like Bissonnette said he is still coping with an injury from that 2011 raid, suffered when the helicopter he was in crash-landed inside Bin Laden’s compound. Bissonette’s Dallas-based malpractice lawyer Randy Johnston said he expects to take former Army lawyer Kevin Podlaski to trial in 2017, for wrongly advising the SEAL that he could publish without submitting the manuscript to the Pentagon first.“He is now claiming he never said he’d vet the book, though his contract with Bissonnette and emails that followed say otherwise,” Johnston said in an interview Podlaski’s New York-based lawyer Mike Furman emailed to say, “We are aggressively defending these allegations in court.”Bissonnette sought and got prepublication review from the Pentagon for his second book, If the point of the government’s exercise was to make Bissonnette an example of what can happen for speaking of top secret operations without prior permission, it worked.“I’d rather go back overseas and fight this country’s worst enemies rather than go into another room full of bullshit lawyers,” he said with some feeling.The Navy SEAL Command essentially declared him persona non grata, including a missive in 2014 from then-commander Rear Adm. Brian Losey.“We do not abide willful or selfish disregard for our core values in return for public notoriety and financial gain,” Losey wrote in a widely reported memo to the force.“Any vet has earned the right to tell his story. In the past, he has used the pseudonym of Mark Owen and a disguise when doing any press to keep the message focused on the team and not the individual. He accepts his responsibility, but this one’s gonna hurt for some time to come.“When I left the military, I got a plaque with my name misspelled, shitty medical care, and now I’m a million dollars in debt,” he said with frustration.
The government allowed the publisher, book agent Elyse Cheney, and co-author Kevin Maurer (a Daily Beast contributor) to keep their earnings, instead of forcing Bissonnette to pay those too.“I think it’s a fair result,” Luskin said. Kimberly Dozier Matt’s military awards include the Silver Star, 5 Bronze Stars with “V”, Purple Heart, Joint Commendation with “V”, Navy Commendation with “V”, Presidential Unit Citation and numerous other awards.Matt continues his service by serving on the Advisory Board for the GWOT Memorial Foundation as well as advocating for transitioning veterans and helping raise money and awareness for multiple veteran-related charities. He was named first by Fox News, and then by other reporters including this one, resulting in an infamy he never intended.“Yeah, I’m the asshole who wrote the book…but I hope I’ve proven I wasn’t trying to get famous,” he said. This week, Matt Bissonnette will undergo surgery to remove remnants of the most famous gunfight of this century from his body.