- Last week’s Pentagon leadership purge included firing top JAG officers, raising alarm.
- JAGs are crucial legal advisors, ensuring military actions comply with the law.
- “I do see this as one of the bigger threats to the rule of law,” an expert in military law told BI.
When President Donald Trump’s Pentagon chief sacked top military officers last week, the most startling firings were the lawyers, legal experts told Business Insider.
The abrupt firing of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., drew condemnation and spurred headlines. But it was the dismissal of top JAG officers — a single line of text at the end of the Friday night announcement — that had those aware of the potential deep impacts on military legal affairs more concerned.
“These firings with the JAGs are more concerning than the firings of the four stars that accompany them,” Franklin D. Rosenblatt, a retired US Army JAG officer and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, told Business Insider in a phone interview on Monday.
“I don’t want to engage in hyperbole, but I do see this as one of the bigger threats to the rule of law that the Pentagon has faced in a long time.”
In the same memo in which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that he was removing Brown and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, and Air Force Vice Chief General James Slife, he also announced a solicitation for “nominations for the Judge Advocates General for the Army, Navy and Air Force,” effectively removing these three senior JAG officers.
The move deepened a sense of upheaval as the administration shifts departmental funding priorities and invites DOGE cost-cutters fresh from gutting USAID.
Speaking to reporters on Monday about the recent developments, Hegseth called the JAGs potential “roadblocks” to the president’s orders.
“We are looking for the best” to replace the fired officers, he said, suggesting that those career officers were not well suited to the task of providing the best recommendations to commanders.
When reached for comment, the Office of the Secretary of Defense directed BI to the transcript of the engagement between Hegseth and reporters in which he characterized the dismissed officers as potential hindrances.
The commander’s ‘right hand’
Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger, was one of the first to raise concerns about the firing of the JAG officers, writing on X last Friday that purging JAG officers worries him the most.
Judge advocates general, or JAGs, are military lawyers and part of the niche and often complex realm of military justice and oversight. Legal experts say that the decision to kneecap these apolitical roles and replace them with a fresh lot could cause harmful ripple effects.
JAG officers serve as legal advisors to commanders at all levels, from battalion leadership directing gunfights and interrogations during the Global War on Terror to the quiet corridors of the Pentagon, where top JAGs can advise commanders spread out across the globe. They don’t set rules for commanders to follow, Rosenblatt said, but instead advise leaders on the legality of their desired employment of US forces.
Mark Nevitt, a former Navy JAG, said in a Just Security post that “summary removals” of these lawyers are “unprecedented in modern times.” He said the “firing without apparent cause of the service JAGs is particularly disturbing.”
These officers practice a wide range of law, supporting not just the military force employment decisions but also endeavors associated with contract and fiscal law through litigation of disputes and advising contracting boards.
JAGs are the military equivalent to general counsels at large companies that advise CEOs on the legality of policies and practices, often recommending courses of action to avoid unnecessary liabilities.
Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images
“JAGs are instrumental in that they’re the right hand of commanders and helping commanders affect their command vision and their goals,” said Rachel VanLandingham, a law professor at Southwestern Law School and former Air Force JAG, in a phone call with BI on Monday.
“We have the Constitution, and flowing from that, a plethora of federal laws and federal regulations that apply to the military,” she said.
JAGs are guardrails for commanders, VanLandingham said. This role is particularly important should a military leader, or even the commander-in-chief, consider wading into the gray areas of military law, like Trump’s previous musings about deploying active-duty troops to American cities.
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed this week that Trump is a rogue president, said that he was deeply troubled by the JAG departures.
“One has to ask why JAG leadership was singled out for replacement,” Kendall wrote, highlighting the authority JAGs have to advise commanders on whether an order from a president or the secretary of defense is lawful.
‘A chilling message’
Prior to Hegseth’s Friday memo on the big shake-ups at DoD, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer, Army Lt. Gen. Joseph Berger, and Navy Rear Adm. Lia Reynolds were the top uniformed military lawyers for each of their armed services.
Rosenblatt said that it was surprising to see Berger’s relief, given that he had advocated for less restrictive legal procedures on the battlefield.
The lack of pre-identified JAG replacements in Hegseth’s Friday memo seems to undermine any assumptions that political leadership has specific, sufficiently “loyal” options in mind, Rosenblatt said. Rather, he said, “it just really seemed to give more credence to the view that Hegseth just doesn’t like military lawyers.”
Hegseth has criticized JAGs in the past as unnecessary and self-serving and has referred to them disparagingly as “JAG-offs” because of their often methodical processes, which Hegseth views as unnecessarily burdensome and harmful to units across the board.
Hegseth is an infantry veteran who served in the Army National Guard and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I have a lot of confidence in the people who may come next,” Rosenblatt said, referring to other high-ranking JAGs who could hold the job. “But there is no doubt that this is sending a chilling message to all of those who may follow the advice of JAGs,” he said.
“This is very much, I think, a message that they want legal advice that’s going to be more politically-minded,” he concluded.
