Family of Nicole Gee, fallen Roseville Marine, commemorates anniversary with Donald Trump

The family of fallen U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole Gee, a Roseville native who was killed in Afghanistan in August 2021, commemorated the third anniversary of her death with former President Donald Trump at the Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.

The anniversary of Gee’s death “is always emotional and hectic,” said Gee’s mother in law, Christy Shamblin, on Wednesday morning. “We just try to take it as it comes every year.”

Gee and 12 other U.S. Marine Corps service members were killed August 26, 2021 in a terrorist attack at the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, which killed more than 170 people. The soldiers have since been called the “Fallen 13.”

Shamblin said that the families of the Fallen 13 are close, and commemorate the anniversary at Arlington together. The Hoover family, whose son Taylor Hoover was killed in the attack, reached out to the Trump campaign and invited them to lay a wreath down on Taylor’s grave together.

“The Trump team is very, very respectful and cognizant,” Shamblin said. “They wanted to be respectful to everyone there.”

A conflict at Arlington?

On Tuesday afternoon, NPR reported that the Trump campaign forced its way into the cemetery on Monday, which led to a verbal and physical altercation with cemetery staff.

Cemetery officials reportedly told the campaign that only cemetery staff members can photograph or film in the section where the wreath-laying ceremony was going to take place, which NPR said resulted in a Trump campaign staffer shoving the Arlington official aside.

Shamblin denied any such conflict occurred. The Trump campaign has also denied the report.

“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” said Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung. “The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony.”

“We saw no altercations or disagreements whatsoever,” Shamblin said. “We were respectful. There were no problems there ... I put this in the same category as the media that says we lied when we talked about (President Joe) Biden checking his watch at the dignified transfer.”

Three days after the Fallen 13 were killed in 2021, their remains were returned to their families in caskets draped in American flags — a process called “dignified transfer — at the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Shamblin and other Fallen 13 families recalled that Biden checked his watch during the ceremony, and some media outlets, and Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki, reported that the families were lying.

“The big news stories that the mainstream media covers about the (Fallen) 13 aren’t stories of honor and respect,” she said. “It’s hard to understand why. There are always stories about some kind of conflict that didn’t happen ... The Trump team worked diligently with us and with Arlington to make sure there weren’t any disruptions to services, or even to any school groups.”

Families ‘have not heard one word’ from Vice President Kamala Harris

Shamblin, who spoke at the Republican National Convention last month, has thrown her support behind Trump’s campaign in large part because she feels the Biden-Harris administration has made the Gold Star Families feel “pushed aside.”

Shamblin and Gee’s family also said they nearly had to shoulder the $60,000 cost of transferring Gee’s remains from California to Arlington, though the Pentagon denied this. An nonprofit organization, Honoring Our Fallen, paid for Gee’s remains to be transferred to Arlington on a private airline rather than a commercial flight.

Shamblin is confident that a second Trump presidency will be better for veterans and their families. The families of the Fallen 13 “have not heard one word” from Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, though they say they have reached out and requested to meet with her but not received any response.

“At least Biden sent us a form letter,” she said.

The Sacramento Bee reached out to Harris’ campaign and did not get a response in time for publication.

“I think one of the most devastating parts of having the administration really just ignore this and not speak their names and speak to us is that you start to feel like your loss is really in vain,” Shamblin said.

The Fallen 13 will be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor next month, Shamblin said. The effort was organized by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, and Republican California Congressman Darrell Issa, as well as veteran Florida Republican Reps. Brian Mast, Cory Mills, and Michael Waltz.