Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stonewalled a behind-the-scenes effort within the Army and on Capitol Hill to extend the career of an influential general, people familiar with the matter said, leading to that officer submitting retirement paperwork and preparing to step down.

Gen. Christopher Donahue, head of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, will leave his role on July 2 after an unusually brief 18-month tenure, these people said, some speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Hegseth’s move has exasperated some Army officials, considering Donahue’s background as a highly regarded Special Operations commander and the secretary’s stated focus on making the military more lethal.

“He’s singularly our best warfighter at every level,” one retired senior Army officer said of Donahue.

The general’s expected departure makes him the latest apparent casualty in Hegseth’s purge of senior military leaders whom the secretary has deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration or branded “woke” for their past defense of diversity initiatives.

Hegseth has fired or otherwise removed dozens of generals and admirals, often without specifying a reason. In April, the Army’s top officer, Gen. Randy George, and two other generals were forced into retirement. The administration has not yet nominated anyone for those roles.

In the years that followed, the general took on other high-profile duties, becoming the head of Army forces in Europe and Africa. He was also widely seen as the next chief of staff of the Army. This week, however, Donahue’s career became notable for a very different reason. The Hill reported:

Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, submitted his paperwork to retire after a little over a year in his position, a Pentagon official told The Hill.

The Pentagon official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military deliberations.

An Army spokesperson soon after confirmed Donahue’s departure in an official statement, thanking the general “for his leadership of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.”

While military leaders retire with some regularity, there’s reason to believe that Donahue’s decision — announced after just 18 months in his position — was not altogether voluntary. CBS News, citing multiple sources, reported that the general exited the military after a lengthy and decorated career because he had “earned the ire of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”....

In fact, the New York Times reported in November that Hegseth had fired or sidelined dozens of officials “with little explanation,” creating “an atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust” within the department. Politico published a similar report the month before, noting that the secretary’s firings have “injected a fresh wave of fear into the Pentagon over the cost of speaking up and who might be next.”

Early last year, five former defense secretaries, including retired Gen. Jim Mattis, Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, condemned the pattern of firings as “reckless.” In a joint letter, addressed to Congress, they asked the House and Senate to hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications” of the dismissals.

Hegseth and the administration appear to have ignored those concerns; the purge is still going on; and GOP leaders on Capitol Hill have scheduled no such hearings.

Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who served as a Marine officer in Iraq and now serves on the House Armed Services Committee, spoke to Politico about Hegseth’s purges, which the congressman described as politically motivated.

“That’s a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,” Moulton said. “That’s the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea.”....

For his part, Hegseth recently defended the pattern during congressional testimony, telling lawmakers who asked about his personnel purge, “Under Barack Obama, 197 general officers were removed. So this is not something specific to this administration.”

We learned soon after that the statistic the secretary cited was entirely made up and had no basis in fact.