Pete Hegseth told senators on a committee investigating his qualifications for defense secretary on Tuesday that “restrictive rules of engagement” have made it “harder to defeat our enemies,” as Democrats on the panel suggested he was undermining the laws of war.
Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, told Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the committee, that his priority would be to “not have lawyers get in the way” of military effectiveness. .
Reed said Hegseth’s call for pardons for convicted war criminals when he was a Fox News host raised questions about his respect for the military judicial process as committee members questioned the nominee.
Reed reference three acts of clemency Trump took over at the end of his first administration and Hegseth made a public case for it, including the two court-martial convictions, saying that “in two of those cases, the service members who fought with those service members who were punished were not receiving apologies.”
Committee Ranking Member Sen. Jack Reed delivers opening remarks, as Committee Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker looks on, during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 14, 2025.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
“They served as soldiers to report war crimes,” Reed said. “Your definition of lethality seems to embrace people who commit war crimes rather than those who say, ‘This is not right.’
Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, testifies before a confirmation hearing for the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 14, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
Shortly before Trump’s November 2019 pardons, Hegseth said the president could take “immediate action” on the convictions. the army Lt. Clint Lorance and Green Beret Matt Golsteyn for war crimes and demotion. the army SEAL Eddie Gallagher was acquitted of killing a wounded Islamic State captive but sentenced to four months in prison and a reduction in rank for posing with a corpse during a 2017 deployment to Iraq.
“I’ve thought very deeply about the balance between legality and lethality,” Hegseth told Reed during Wednesday’s confirmation hearing, “ensuring that the men and women on the front lines have the opportunity to destroy the enemy, and lawyers are not.” not those who get in the way.”
Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, convicted of the 2013 murder and attempted murder of the men in Afghanistan, is appealing his case after prosecutors failed to disclose fingerprint and DNA evidence that identified the men in Afghanistan as the bombers. not civilians
Maher Legal Services PC
Later pressed by independent senator Angus King, Hegseth admitted that the Geneva Convention was the “law of the land” but that these laws of war existed “above reality” and that there was a “tactical distinction” between international law and combat. the earth
“The moment you get to a company or platoon or squad level, you have rules of engagement that no one knows. And then it becomes incredibly difficult for you to do your job on the battlefield,” the combat veteran said.
Matthew Golsteyn is pictured in this undated photo.
Obtained by ABC News
“We follow the rules. But we don’t need burdensome rules of engagement that make it impossible for us to win these wars,” he said.
Reed, also an Army veteran, asked Hegseth, “You’ve already undermined the Geneva Convention, the rules of law, all these things when you wrote them. How are you going to be able to effectively run an army where one of the key elements is discipline, respect for legal authority?”
The senator also invoked the derogatory term Hegseth used to describe Army lawyers, the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAG, which he called “jagoffs” in his book “War on Warriors.”
“There are no infantrymen like army lawyers,” Hegseth wrote at the time.
Chief of Army Special Operations Edward Gallagher celebrates with his wife after being acquitted of premeditated murder at Naval Base San Diego, July 2, 2019, in San Diego, California.
Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images, FILE
Hegseth first declined to specify when asked, but, pressed a second time by Reed, referred to the term as “a JAG officer who puts his priorities before the warriors, the promotions, the medals, before the warriors, before their medals.” their backs are making hard calls in the front lines.
Reed sarcastically replied, “Interesting.”
Hegseth acknowledged that the Uniform Code of Military Justice is made up of “laws enacted by Congress … when asked by Senator Elissa Slotkin whether she wanted to change them.”
Slotkin noted that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has been “a JAG official his whole life.”
Hegseth said he was “only talking about the JAG officers I’ve had to deal with” in his first written statement.
