“You have to understand that SEALs aren’t what they used to be, all the badassery really doesn’t exist anymore because of shit like this,” Treven, 18, wrote in a series of social media posts. “The new generation of SEALs aren’t like those you see who have movies about them.”

Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher stands accused by his former SEAL teammates of murdering a teenage detainee in Mosul, Iraq with a knife. His fellow SEALs have also alleged that he murdered civilians while they were in Iraq, ostensibly stationed in Mosul to fight ISIS. Chief Gallagher’s defense team has countered that these are bitter false accusations made up by subordinates who did not accept their chief’s tough, take-charge style of leadership. “I’ve met many of these men before,” Treven said of his step-father’s accusers, “and they seemed not like SEALs.” In another social media post he wrote of his father’s teammates that, “they are out to get him, he worked them like [a] horse and those pussies couldn’t handle it.”

Treven continued, writing that the stories being told by his step-father’s teammates don’t add up. “All of their stories are different, one of the guys was said to have been in tears and shaking on the stand. Remember this is over an alleged stabbing, a U.S. Navy SEAL is [in] tears and shaking over a stabbing. Just doesn’t sound normal in my head.” Treven says he knows most of the accusers personally.

Treven and his mother, Gallagher’s wife Andrea Gallagher, have both spoken out in defense of their family member, taking up a bold, risky strategy—one that appears to attempt to court public opinion. Mrs. Gallagher has appeared on Fox News and, in a recent social media post, described Chief Gallagher’s pending court martial as the result of “shameless allegations made up by a handful of jaded cowards who started this smear/whisper campaign back in 2017 against my husband.”

Mrs. Gallagher’s social media profile goes so far as to call out an NCIS investigator and one of the prosecutors on Gallagher’s court martial by name, describing him as a “non-deployed lawyer in uniform.”

Meanwhile, the charges against Chief Gallagher are dire and now also include obstruction of justice, with prosecutors alleging that the SEAL attempted to intimidate his teammates into not talking to investigators. A SEAL lieutenant assigned to Chief Gallagher’s platoon is also being charged with helping to cover up his chief’s alleged war crimes.

The Navy Times reported that evidence being used against the accused “included videos apparently posted on YouTube, a helmet-camera video of the wounded fighter and SEALs in the Mosul house, footage of Gallagher’s re-enlistment ceremony done over the dead fighter, and ‘deer kill’ photographs of Gallagher, flashing a knife, and with several SEALs posing with the body.”

In speaking up in defense of his step-father, Treven wrote, “the SEAL community isn’t tight-knit, that’s what they want you to think.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Treven is Edward Gallagher’s step son rather than his biological son.