David Brahms

Our beloved General David Brahms is gravely ill. Early in the morning of Thursday, September 19, 2019, General Brahms suffered a seizure and was rushed to Tri-City Hospital. He is currently (as of September 23) in the Intensive Care Unit at the Jacobs Center at UC San Diego. He has been in a coma for over a week. He is on four anti-seizure medications and heavy sedation. The medical team at Jacobs is trying to ween him off the sedation. Last time they terminated sedation he did not wake up and the seizures returned. Please watch here for updates.

David is a retired Brigadier General who served in the United States Marine Corps. A 1959 graduate of Harvard College with a BA in Psychology, he later took a platoon leaders course while a student at Harvard Law School and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1961. David graduated from Harvard Law School in 1962. He completed basic officer training, and training in military law in 1963, and then served as a military lawyer in the 2nd Marine Division from November 1963 to June 1965, during which time he served in the Dominican Republic during an incursion. By 1969, he had been promoted to Major and was sent to serve with the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in Da Nang, Vietnam. In 1976 and 1977 he attended the National Law Center George Washington University, where he studied law psychiatry and criminology, and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. David was promoted to Brigadier General in 1985, prior to serving as director, Judge Advocate Division, for the final three years of his active military career. In 1988 he retired from active military service. He is a longtime resident of Carlsbad, California, in a condo he shared with his late wife, Mary Alice Eisenhart.

Since his retirement, David has been a regular contributor to Diane Sawyer on military matters. He provided counsel to every Oval Office from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama. He was a founding member of American Combat Veterans of War, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to the men and women who have stepped to the line and raised their right hand to serve and protect our nation. He was instrumental in implementing a program in which prison inmates who are veterans could attend Palomar College while incarcerated. He has practiced law with Rickard Borg for the last 20 years and has defended several high-profile Camp Pendleton criminal cases, including Marines involved in the Haditha, Iraq, killings. He is currently serving in the capacity of counsel to Borg Norris and Corrigan.