This article mentions two Marine sergeants:
Here is a disgraceful case with a retired admiral:
I thought the idea was to recall him to duty so they could tell him to shut up.
The answer is Yes. I don’t purport to be an expert, but generally, yes, retired members of the military still subject to the jurisdiction the UCMJ. The reasoning is they are still members of the military in some capacity - they are paid and subject to recall to active-duty.
It is rare for a retired member to be charged in a courts-martial because the same crimes also share jurisdiction with the State and Federal. They usually just get prosecuted there like civilians.
You don’t have to be recalled to active-duty to be tried in a courts-martial for a crime under the UCMJ. Sometimes that is done for admin purposes, though.
The above is generally. This situation may be different for some weird quirk where an exception would apply.
Of course, this whole thing is obviously fabricated and all that.
This decision by Hegseth is really confusing me.
I know Hegseth is stupid… But THAT stupid? He must KNOW that Kelly said, explicitly that members of the US military must follow the Constitution, and not follow ILLEGAL orders.
And for this, Hegseth thinks he has a case? Does he not know that this is just going to embarrass him, after the “Investigation” blows up in his face?
Sure, it’s probably all about just starting an “investigation” as red meat for the rubes. But those rubes are getting fewer and fewer, and I’d think this is just going to piss off even more members of the military.
Any judge that gets this case should first dismiss then ask for autographs from Sen Kelley for his kids and grandkids.
I cannot know what Hegseth is thinking. But I am not confident military prosecutors will defy him.
The civilian leadership of the Defense/War Department is almost surely pushing NCIS to claim that he violated the good order clause of the general article:
If I understand correctly, they would normally charge a sailor with something specific in additional to violating good order. But this is the Navy. You do not have civilian rights.
Of course it is unfair to treat a retiree like someone on active duty. The law should change. Or SCOTUS should make a ruling to stop it. Will they?
If anything will blow up, it is Trump’s push for a death sentence or sedition trial. But he backs down a lot without it seeming to hurt him. If DJT gets Kelly, maybe he will claim that as a win and forget about the other five.
My favorite character from The Bing Bong Theory.
Well, yes.
Thank you for starting a really important thread.
If Trump can muzzle and/or jail Senator Kelly, we are well on our way to being an undisputed dictatorship.
But if Trump cannot even control the military’s justice system, it’s hard to see him fully consolidating power.
Prediction: Charges against Kelly will include Article 88:
Military members have been convicted of social media Article 88 violations before. That’s why they are told not to criticize their command chain on places like this. However, retired members never have been tried for post-retirement violations. If Kelly goes in the brig, part of the message is that the millions retired from the American military have little in the way of freedom of political speech.
But what Kelly said is true, you think? As my first link above notes, that’s no defense for an Article 88 violation.
Kelly could say the recent video didn’t insult Trump or Hegseth, but it did so by implication.
And almost everyone who has criticized Trump on the internet has at some point written something contemptuous. If NCIS searches hard enough to find something Kelly said that was clearly insulting, they are likely to find it.
Only a military judge can dismiss a military case. While a brave judge may conceivably do so, they’ll do so expecting their military career is over. I cannot see the judge then asking for autographs.
I think Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego had a pithy response to Hegseth.
More than that. It will be a full admission that any former serving member of the military is now governed by Lèse-majesté. You can never insult the King. In any form, even indirectly, by saying that the military should obey the constitution and never follow an illegal order.
Next step is a personal loyalty oath by all current and former military members to Donald Trump personally.
This is complete and utter horseshit, and I hope that sane heads will see exactly where this is heading.
Any “investigation” should take about 3 minutes.
Or, they’re in the rare position for a politician, in which doing the right thing is also doing the popular thing. No one outside the MAGAsphere will object to this message, and even quite a few Republican voters will support them, because they’re so obviously correct about what they said. The only ones making noise about this are the ones fully committed to Trump’s bullshit.
If they can get Kelly on such an obviously Trumped-up charge, they can get anyone, and they’ll do just that. It will be open season on anyone who says bad things about Trump or MAGA. And the rank and file in the military will see that. Who would stick their necks out, if a retired Navy captain, astronaut, and Senator can be taken down? Is Private Smith going to fare better?
Echos of the slide into the English Civil War.
Not to alarm you, or anything.
I’m not convinced conviction is the goal here. The point is intimidation, instilling fear, and as a side dish bankrupting the accused via the necessity of paying for legal defense. Fiscal ruination if nothing else. Anything to oppress people and make the miserable.
There’s a lot of panic in this thread over what I think is almost nothing substantive so far. We don’t even know if an actual investigation is taking place. Hegseth may have just been publicly appeasing Trump, and there will be nothing further aside from vague allusions to an ongoing investigation.
Even if there is an investigation, I’m very skeptical it will go anywhere. The military has real lawyers, not Trump stooges and clowns.
The military had real lawyers. One of Hegseth’s first actions was to fire the JAG chiefs of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Even if, in the end, no charges are filed against Sen. Kelly, what do you imagine happens now to the principle that he cited?
It has been stripped of all meaning. Now no one in uniform is going to risk finding out what happens when they refuse illegal orders.
As @Broomstick noted, “the point is intimidation.” It is directed not only at the senators who spoke up but also at the military rank-and-file who are looking on.
Fuck drunken Hegseth. The USA is still the most powerful force projection army/navy/air force, but for how long? How long before, say Rwanda - with no navy, minimal aircraft and an army of less than 33 000 just says, fuck it, let’s invade?
That little video was symbolic. It was another reminder that Trump doesn’t control everything, and there are principles higher than Trump. If they do nothing about it but fume and vent and lie on social media, then that symbolic bit of messaging worked. We likely won’t know any real impact, or real illegality among orders, until the next administration (or at least until Democrats get Congress back and have subpoena power).