'Serious breach': Experts alarmed as Trump administration sidelines military lawyers
Experts are raising the alarm on the United States' three recent attacks on Venezuelan ships, saying that military lawyers would have advised against them. The incidents raise "serious questions about the availability and effectiveness of government lawyers," according to former judge advocate officer Dan Maurer in Lawfare.
"I have grown increasingly concerned," Maurer says. "When those bulwarks are removed or ignored, force is used in criminal ways that delegitimize the armed forces."
Although Trump insists that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is attempting an "invasion," experts and intelligence officials say the gang is weak and decentralized, according to the LA Times.
Maurer says the framing of Trump's Tren de Aragua boat attack as a strike on a terrorist group in a foreign country during Congress-sanctioned military operations is a dangerous one. Military lawyers, he says, "should have raised red flags before this operation commenced."
He also says that the undermining of judge advocates general (JAGs) — commissioned military officers licensed to practice law and assigned to positions where that knowledge, skill and expertise is used to counsel commanders and represent the interests of the Department of Defense — is dangerous.
The Department of Defense must, Maurer explains "comply with applicable laws and regulations when executing missions for the latter."
"If these lawyers were kept in the dark during the strike, it would reflect a serious breach of a norm (and established administrative and military doctrinal processes) meant to ensure U.S. military operations are vetted for legality constantly," Maurer says.
He also points to what he calls Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's "notable contempt for JAGs" as cause for alarm.
Hegseth's "unprecedented relief of the top JAG generals in the Army and Air Force in February, and the current plan to shift 600 JAGs out of their military assignments and into temporary immigration judge robes justifies suspicion that either JAGs in the chain of command were not invited to the planning of this attack or their legal advice — which surely would have pushed back on this plan — was ignored," Maurer says.
The administration's sidelining of or disregard for military legal advice, Maurer notes, is doing serious damage to U.S. military operations, he says.
It "bodes ill for the perceived and actual legitimacy of U.S. military operations, diminishes trust that the military follows the rule of law over the rule of command and erodes confidence in the nonpartisanship of the armed forces," Maurer says.
Former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Corn calls it a "dangerous precedent."
"If ‘principled counsel’ is steamrolled in this new Department of War, what will constrain the future abuse of military power?” Corn asks in a thinkpiece for national security website The Cipher Brief.
"That this attack occurred at all, under the conditions Trump himself admits, should give all Americans reason to be skeptical that the life-and-death decisions and actions taken by the U.S. military will continue to have the basic protections of thorough, unbiased legal analysis by the very officers that commanders have long trusted for that counsel," Corn adds.
