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Former top Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot, who was sidelined for his role in the removal of a Department of Defense website celebrating Baseball Hall of Famer and trailblazer Jackie Robinson, announced his resignation on Wednesday (April 16) via Politico.
Ullyot said his decision was made after a meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth -- whom he claimed he would still be a staunch supporter of -- failed to result in a job offer for a role he sought.
“I made clear to Secretary Hegseth before the inauguration that I was not interested in being number two to anyone in public affairs,” Ullyot told Politico, claiming he only offered to assist the Pentagon for two months on an acting basis from the outset.
“Last month, as that time approached, the secretary and I talked and could not come to an agreement on another good fit for me at DOD,” he added. “So I informed him today that I will be leaving at the end of this week.”
Ullyot was relegated to a "special projects" role at the Pentagon amid outage over the decision to remove an online article crediting the military background of Robinson, who broke the color barrier as the first Black athlete in professional sports upon making his Major League Baseball debut for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the Washington Post reported last month. Ullyot defended the removal of the article on Robinson, a six-time All-Star, 1949 NL MVP and batting champion and 1955 World Series champion, claiming that diversity, equity and inclusion "is dead at the Defense Department," according to ESPN.
The public affairs official released an updated statement about an hour later claiming: “Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, as well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima and so many others — we salute them for their strong and in many cases heroic service to our country, full stop.”
“In the rare cases that content is removed — either deliberately or by mistake — that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content so it recognizes our heroes for their dedicated service alongside their fellow Americans, period,” Ullyot added.
The article on Robinson's military service was restored on the Department of Defense's website shortly after and Sean Parnell replaced Ullyot as the top Pentagon spokesman. Ullyot's resignation came on the same week that three top Pentagon officials were put on leave amid an investigation into Department of Defense leaks.