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‘Accelerated Autocracy’: Why Hegseth’s Firing of Top Military Attorneys Is Raising Alarms
President Donald Trump’s Friday night firing of the nation’s highest-ranking military official, coupled with U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s sweeping purge of senior military leaders and top military attorneys—removing a total of six of the Defense Department’s most experienced officials—has sparked serious concern among experts.
On Friday night, Trump terminated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Charles Q. Brown, from his four-year appointed term. No reason was given.
Immediately after, Secretary Hegseth dismissed Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the chief of the Navy, and Air Force Vice-Chief General James Slife.
He also fired all three of the Judge Advocates General (JAGs, or TJAGs), the top attorneys for the Army, Navy, and Air Force — a move some experts say should be the greatest cause for concern.
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On “Fox News Sunday,” Secretary Hegseth explained his reasoning for the JAG firings.
“We want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice,” Hegseth told host Shannon Bream. “And don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens in their spots.”
As Law & Crime reports, “Bream brought up an X post, specifically, from Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks, which said: ‘In some ways that’s even more chilling than firing the four stars. It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: you get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.'”
Hegseth says firing of top military lawyers was about making sure “they don’t exist to be roadblocks to anything that happens.” pic.twitter.com/JuxhmHARrM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 23, 2025
Indeed, The New York Times calls the firings “an opening salvo” in Hegseth’s “push to remake the military into a force that is more aggressive on the battlefield and potentially less hindered by the laws of armed conflict.”
“Mr. Hegseth, in the Pentagon and during his meetings with troops last week in Europe, has spoken repeatedly about the need to restore a ‘warrior ethos’ to a military that he insists has become soft, social-justice obsessed and more bureaucratic over the past two decades.”
Experts on the law, the military, and authoritarianism and democracy are raising the alarm.
“The purge of senior officers at DOD is deeply troubling, but purging JAG officers worries me the most,” warned U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), a former Army Captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “JAG officers interpret law for our commanders. They help determine what’s lawful and constitutional. Replacing these military lawyers with [Trump] loyalists is so dangerous.”
Professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascism and authoritarian leaders, responded to Hegseth’s “roadblocks” remark:
“Well that is the truth. All of this is a process of rearranging government for an accelerated transition from democracy to autocracy. That includes a new domestic role for the military and new autocratic allies abroad.”
U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), a former CIA analyst and Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, called the firings a “purge of senior officers who have served with distinction on the battlefield and off,” and said it “should send a shiver down the spine of any American who cares about an apolitical military.”
“No matter how they try and spin it,” she added, Trump and Hegseth “have brought their political retribution to the very warfighters they claim to care about. And we are no safer for it.”
Describing the firings as “an unprecedented shakeup of senior military leadership,” Associate Professor of Law Mark Nevitt—a former Distinguished Military Professor of Leadership and Law at the U.S. Naval Academy—warns at Just Security of “Trump’s purge of apolitical career officers.”
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“Make no mistake,” Nevitt writes in a lengthy and detailed explainer, “these firings are extraordinary and destabilize a longstanding norm of separating uniformed military members from politics. It is not an overstatement to characterize these firings as unprecedented and dangerous. What’s more, this purge is occurring against a backdrop of massively complex national security challenges in Ukraine, the Middle East, and beyond.”
On Trump’s firing of the JAG lawyers, Kevin Barron, the founding executive editor of Defense One writes: “Trump is also replacing the military’s top lawyers, who swear to defend the Constitution, with loyalists who will defend him. That’s Hegseth building in pure cover fire for ‘King’ Trump. If Trump has automatic SCOTUS immunity, so could his retribution orders to the military.”
Fred Wellman is a graduate of West Point and the Harvard Kennedy School, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, and is now a political consultant and the host of the podcast and Substack newsletter, “On Democracy.”
“They fired the top lawyers of all three service branches. That’s the really dark part,” Wellman declared, referring to the JAG firings. “This is the most dangerous move yet,” he wrote, calling it a “Friday Night Massacre.”
“When I was the Public Affairs Officer for six different general officers in the latter part of my career in the Army, my best friend was always the Judge Advocate General of the command,” Wellman explained. “The good JAGs are unafraid to speak truth to power and ensure the law is followed to the letter. Pete Hegseth hates those JAGs. This is a man that openly supported and campaigned for the pardons of multiple war criminals who were justifiably prosecuted and convicted based on evidence from fellow service members for the torture and murder of civilians in combat.”
Wellman appears to suggest that firing the JAG attorneys could precede possible enactment of the Insurrection Act.
“When you run out the reasons to fire the lawyers by a SecDef and President who do not respect the rule of law, it is clear that the intent is to remove barriers from breaking the laws and military regulations,” he said. “The obvious reason is usually the right one.”
“We know that Project 2025 and Agenda 47 both included references to enacting the Insurrection Act and using military forces to put down public protest and assist in mass deportations and interments. Lawyers with a loose relationship with the law would happily approve actions that skirt the letter of the law and provide legal cover for outrageous uses of our apolitical military against our own people.”
And he suggests those three fired JAG lawyers could have been the “guardrails” to stop a possible invasion of Mexico, Canada, Greenland, or Panama — or the use of the military against American citizens, should Trump choose to do so.
“Who do you think are the people that would have interpreted international law, military regulations, and treaty obligations when the military is ordered to carry out air strikes and raids in Mexico against the newly designated ‘international terrorist’ drug cartels?” Wellman posits. “Who do you think will be advising the service chiefs on use of their forces for seizing the Panama Canal, Greenland, or the utterly comical, but entirely real chance of an invasion of Canada?”
“What about looking at the law and military regulations on the use of force against civilians? Remember, the former SecDef refused to order troops to shoot protestors in the legs under Trump’s first regime. I have no doubt that Hegseth with the right lawyers won’t share that restraint next time.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Image via Reuters
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U.S. Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) blasted a Fox News host for minimizing the potential lethal consequences to American service members that he says could have resulted from the Trump national security team’s use of Signal to plan out the recent bombing on Yemen. One of the participants of that chat was in Moscow, having visited with Russian President Putin, within hours of the 18-member chat.
Fox News host Will Cain chastised the Democrats’ anger and outrage over what is being called Signalgate, alleging it was “to score political points, the first political points they’ve been able to accomplish in two months.”
“Will,” Congressman Himes replied, “what we’re talking about here, and I’ve spent a decade now watching how our intelligence community communicates with the war fighter. So I am not going to listen to you tell me that this is about a ‘partisan advantage.'”
“It is a mistake, and yes, it’s a very serious mistake. Because if you make a mistake in Social Security and grandma doesn’t get a phone call through, that’s bad,” he said, highlighting the Trump administration’s reported targeting of the agency. “But there is not zero risk that our young men and women in uniform, the ones who flew those F-35s and F-18s—” he said before Cain cut him off.
READ MORE: ‘Putin Is Giddy’: NSA Knew Signal Was Vulnerable to Russian Hackers Before Security Breach
The Fox News host appeared to not understand how lives could have been put at risk—at one point calling it a mere “hypothetical”—and demanded Himes explain.
“Because in an insecure channel, in what was acknowledged as a mistake, before, whether it was a day or two hours or five hours, in a Signal chat that we know,” he said, “that the Russians could intercept, they might have told the Houthis in an hour, and in half an hour, they’re moving their anti-aircraft stuff around.”
“It is by the grace of God that we don’t have dead pilots or sunken ships right now,” Himes continued.
Cain claimed that the “mistake” was the accidental addition of The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat, when the larger crisis was holding what experts agree should have been a meeting in a SCIF—a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility—via Signal.
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“Including Jeffrey Goldberg was the mistake,” Cain insisted. “You are hyperbolically taking this over the top—yes, absolutely for partisan points.”
“You are the one who is making this into a partisan issue,” Himes continued, “and we are talking about the lives of our young men and women, and it makes me want to throw up to hear you turn this into a partisan issue when we are talking about the lives of airmen and Marines and sailors.”
Cain at that point began to break into laughter.
“You just need to stop this,” Himes insisted.
Watch the video below or at this link.
Wow — Jim Himes during a heated exchange with Will Cain on Fox News: “I’m not gonna listen to to you tell me that this about a partisan advantage … it is by the grace of God that we don’t have dead pilots of sunken ships right now … it makes me want to throw up to hear you… pic.twitter.com/PjNQPiiAM5
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2025
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The National Security Agency was reportedly aware of vulnerabilities in the messaging app Signal weeks before 18 top Trump administration national security and defense officials used the app in a group chat to plan the recent bombing of Yemen. Those vulnerabilities, an NSA memo warned, were being exploited by Russian hackers. Details have also emerged that at least two top administration officials who were in the chat were overseas, including one in Moscow — where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The use of the Signal app by the upper echelon of Donald Trump’s national security and defense team has rocked the nation, fueling concerns over the mishandling of sensitive—and potentially classified—information in ways that may be unlawful. These fears are seemingly compounded by Trump’s alleged mishandling of hundreds of classified documents, which led to criminal charges that were ultimately dropped after the U.S. Supreme Court granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts.
CBS News reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), an arm of the Pentagon, had “sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal.”
The NSA operates under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
The Pentagon also sent out a memo warning of Signal’s vulnerabilities and use by Russian hackers, just days after that group chat.
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“Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing the Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information,” NPR reported Tuesday.
“Russian professional hacking groups are employing the ‘linked devices’ features to spy on encrypted conversations,” the Pentagon’s memo warned.
It also notes that Google has identified Russian hacking groups who are “targeting Signal Messenger to spy on persons of interest.”
The Pentagon memo reminded users that “third-party messaging apps (e.g. Signal) are permitted by policy for unclassified accountability/recall exercises but are not approved to process or store non-public unclassified information.”
NPR’s Quil Lawrence noted that “NPR has seen DoD memo as far back as 2023 prohibiting mobile apps for discussing even much less sensitive info like ‘controlled unclassified information.'”
Last month, a Google Threat Intelligence memo warned of the use of apps like Signal by “military personnel, politicians, journalists, activists, and other at-risk communities.”
Critics argue that the use of Signal for “war plans” was against policy. During Tuesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing CIA Director John Ratcliffe had insisted Signal was approved for use.
National security experts, including at least one former Trump administration official, have been highly critical of the use of the app by the 18-members in a chat.
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President Trump’s Ukraine and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff “was in Moscow, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, when he was included in a group chat with more than a dozen other top administration officials — and inadvertently, one journalist — on the messaging app Signal,” CBS News reported on Tuesday. “Russia has repeatedly tried to compromise Signal, a popular commercial messaging platform that many were shocked to learn senior Trump administration officials had used to discuss sensitive military planning.”
Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, acknowledged on Tuesday during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that she was overseas during the Signal chat. The Associated Press reported the DNI “wouldn’t say whether she was using her personal or government-issued phone because the matter is under review by the White House National Security Council.”
The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov appears to be one of the first to note that Witkoff had been in Moscow during the time the chat had been organized. He notes: “The Signal app itself has high encryption. But if your phone is inside Russia, and especially if your WiFi and Bluetooth are not disabled, Russia can see what is inside your phone pretty easily.”
On Tuesday morning, U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) noted: “Not a single person out of 18 of the very most senior officials in this Admin — including the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA Director — voiced any concern with highly classified military plans circulated on Signal. You also can be sure this is not the only time.”
The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and scholar, responded to Congressman Goldman, writing: “Putin is giddy. He has compromised the phones of every top national security official in the Trump administration. No doubt has enough juicy information from what is likely to be multiple Signal chats to deeply damage American security. And possibly to blackmail some of them.”
RELATED: Trump Shrugs Off Signalgate, Backs Advisor at Center of National Security Scandal
Image via Reuters
Top Senate Democrats tore into the Directors of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency during a Tuesday hearing on global security threats, demanding answers after a bombshell report found they used an unsecured messaging app to plan a bombing in Yemen — possibly in violation of the law.
Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard refused to answer several questions from Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA), including whether she participated in “the group chat with the Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans.”
“Senator,” Gabbard replied, “I don’t want to get into the specifics,” a statement she made at least three times before the frustrated Vice Chair then asked: “Is this, is it because it’s all classified?”
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Gabbard would only say that the incident “is currently under review by the National Security Council.”
“Because it’s all classified?” Warner pressed. “If it’s not classified, share the texts now. Is it classified or non-classified?”
Tulsi Gabbard refuses to answer Warner’s questions about the Signal group chat pic.twitter.com/vMLfszfFMN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2025
Gabbard ultimately told Warner that “there was no classified materials that was shared in that Signal chat.”
He immediately replied, “If there was no classified material, share it with the committee.”
“You can’t have it both ways. These are important jobs. This is our national security,” Warner said, as Gabbard remained silent and expressionless.
But several Senators appeared to be unconvinced or uncomfortable with her claim of no classified information in the Signal chat.
U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) told Gabbard that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences and timing—and yet you’ve testified that nothing in that text, in that chain was classified.”
“Wouldn’t that be classified? What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place?” he asked.
RELATED: Trump Shrugs Off Signalgate, Backs Advisor at Center of National Security Scandal
“Senator,” Gabbard replied, “I can attest to the fact that there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat group at any time,” she insisted.
“So the attack sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you don’t consider should have been classified?” King asked.
“I defer to the to Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on that question,” Gabbard responded.
“Well,” King, appearing somewhat dumbfounded, reminded Gabbard, “you’re the head of the intelligence community and you’re supposed to know about classifications.”
“So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified,” King continued, noting that “if that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a a view of what actually transpired on this on this discussion.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified,” he concluded.
Angus King doesn’t buy Gabbard’s testimony that war plans ahead of military strikes isn’t actually classified information pic.twitter.com/wxywXSkPhc
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2025
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) further pressed Gabbard on what Senator King had seemed to suggest might be potentially classified information.
“In the Signal chain, was there any mention of a target in Yemen?” he asked.
“I don’t remember mention of specific targets,” Gabbard replied.
“Any generic target?” Senator Kelly asked.
Gabbard, pausing, then replied, “I believe there was discussion around ‘targets,’ in general,” she said.
Earlier in the hearing, Vice Chair Warner had blasted the Trump national security officials who were using Signal, the unsecured messaging app, to map out the Yemen bombing.
“There’s plenty of declassified information that shows that our adversaries, China and Russia are trying to break in to encrypted systems like Signal,” the Vice Chair said. “I can just say this, if this was the case of the military officer or an intelligence officer, and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired.”
“I think this is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one off or a first time error,” he lamented.
Warner, with Gabbard and Ratcliffe sitting in front of him: “If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired.” pic.twitter.com/Rn3AWtZbkq
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 25, 2025
Watch the videos above or at this link.
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Image via Reuters
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