Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first effort to go after Sen. Mark Kelly hasn’t fared well. After the beleaguered Pentagon chief tried to punish the Arizona Democrat for appearing in a video urging service members not to follow illegal orders, Kelly went to court to block Hegseth’s effort, and in February, a federal judge appointed by George W. Bush agreed that the secretary was ignoring the First Amendment.
Undeterred, Hegseth appealed his legal defeat. But while he waits for his second court loss, the former Fox News host has apparently found another reason to go after Kelly. The Hill reported:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s latest attack against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is underscoring the alarm over the state of the U.S. military’s weapons stockpiles more than two months into the war with Iran.
Hegseth accused Kelly, a Navy veteran and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), of divulging classified information regarding key U.S. munitions during his appearance on a Sunday news show, putting a spotlight not only on his ongoing feud with the Arizona Republican but also on the high-usage rate of premier munitions against Tehran and the time it will take to replenish them.
The trouble began on Sunday morning when the Democratic senator and decorated veteran appeared on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” and expressed concern about the resources the military has expended during the war in Iran.
“We’ve expended a lot of munitions,” Kelly said. “And that means the American people are less safe. Whether it’s a conflict in the western Pacific with China or somewhere else in the world, the munitions are depleted.”
Hegseth responded with an odd tweet, alleging that the Arizonan was “blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a *CLASSIFIED* Pentagon briefing he received.” The secretary went on to question whether Kelly had “violated his oath,” adding that the Pentagon legal counsel would investigate the matter.
To be sure, Hegseth has earned a reputation as a spectacularly unserious person, so there was nothing especially surprising about his online rant or his continued fixation on Kelly. But even by Hegseth’s standards, this was quite foolish.
For one thing, the Democratic senator obviously didn’t share any classified information, speaking instead in generalities about widely recognized concerns.
For another, the Pentagon chief might prefer to shut down any public conversation about depleted munitions, but Kelly’s observations had real merit.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump inexplicably told reporters, in response to a question about possible weapons shortages, “We have more than we’ve ever had, actually.”
As The New York Times reported soon after, the president’s claims weren’t even close to being true: “Inventories of air-defense missiles, air-launched stealth cruise missiles and Tomahawk missiles have all been greatly reduced because of the war, and will take years to replenish.”
We know this not because of a classified briefing, but because of readily available public information, including Hegseth’s own recent congressional testimony. The defense secretary might find this embarrassing, inconvenient or both, but investigating a sitting senator for making an accurate observation about a pressing security matter is ridiculous.
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