1. Home
2. Daily News
3. Top military lawyers are fired; will replacements…

Military Law

Top military lawyers are fired; will replacements allow more aggressive battlefield approach?

By Debra Cassens Weiss

February 24, 2025, 10:03 am CST

The secretary for the U.S. Department of Defense is looking for new judge advocates general for the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, he said in an announcement Friday.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fired the lawyers currently in those top JAG positions, the New York Times reports, representing “an opening salvo in his 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.”

Commenting Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, Rosa Brooks, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said firing the top lawyers is “what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down.”

On Fox News Sunday, Hegseth was asked for his response to Brooks, report Law & Crime and the Daily Beast.

“We want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens in their spots,” he said.

The New York Times identified the fired lawyers as Lt. Gen. Joseph B. Berger III, Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Plummer and Rear Adm. Lia M. Reynolds.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.