An urgent plea by five former defense secretaries — including Lloyd Austin, who stepped down in January — for Congress to immediately hold hearings on the recent and unexplained firings of top military officers by the Trump administration appears likely to go unanswered.
In the letter, the former top Pentagon civilian leaders said they were “deeply alarmed” by the firings, which they called reckless, and feared they were carried out for “purely partisan reasons” to politicize the military. Any hearings on the firings of the Joint Chiefs chairman, top Navy officer and others by President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would likely be held by Congress’ armed services committees, which are tasked with oversight of the military.
But asked Tuesday about the former Pentagon chiefs’ appeal, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said that he is not interested in holding hearings on the issue, despite the alarm rung by past defense secretaries.
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“The president’s got the prerogative to have the people he wants leading the Pentagon,” Rogers said. “He’s the commander in chief.”
Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., declined to answer the question altogether, saying that he does not “have any response today” because “today is a day for me to step back.” Wicker did not elaborate on why he could not respond Tuesday, a day when he was working and voting.
The disinterest from the powerful leaders of the two committees with the most jurisdiction over the matter signals Congress is unlikely to dig deeper into the firings.
At issue is Trump’s unprecedented firings last month of Gen. “CQ” Brown as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Adm. Lisa Franchetti as chief of naval operations; Gen. James Slife as Air Force vice chief of staff; and the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
Neither Trump nor Hegseth has given any reasons for the firings.
But both Brown, the second Black man to be Joint Chiefs chairman, and Franchetti, the first woman on the Joint Chiefs, were frequent targets of conservatives who have accused the military of turning into a “woke” hotbed of left-wing policies, including Hegseth before he became defense secretary.
In response to the firings, last week, five former defense secretaries penned an “appeal to Congress” calling for hearings, The Associated Press first reported. Among the signatories were Austin, Hegseth’s immediate predecessor under the Biden administration, and Jim Mattis, who served in the first Trump administration before splitting with Trump over the U.S. military presence in Syria.
The other signatories were William Perry, who served in the Clinton administration, and Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel, who both served in the Obama administration.
In addition to calling for hearings, the former secretaries also implored the Senate not to confirm any Pentagon nominees — including the retired lieutenant general Trump chose to replace Brown as Joint Chiefs chairman — until his administration provides answers on dismissing the top officers.
“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power,” the former secretaries wrote. “We’re not asking members of Congress to do us a favor; we’re asking them to do their jobs.”
While Republicans have largely brushed off the firings as being within the president’s power, Democrats have sounded the alarm.
On Monday, every Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee sent a letter to Hegseth demanding he provide a legal justification for firing the judge advocates general, essentially the top legal officials for the service branches.
Noting laws for each of the military services that say “no officer or employee of the Department of Defense may interfere with the ability of the Judge Advocate General to give independent legal advice,” the senators said the firings appear to be a “direct violation of federal law.”
“By arbitrarily and baselessly removing duly selected and highly qualified JAG officers, the administration undermines the military justice system and has interfered with the independent legal counsel that uniformed attorneys provide to commanders and the department itself,” the letter, organized by Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said.
The firings, the letter added, create an “unmistakable chilling effect” and signal to judge advocates that their positions are contingent on “political or personal loyalty” rather than expertise or adherence to the law.
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