Since being confirmed as Secretary of Defense in January 2025, Pete Hegseth has presided over a pattern of conduct that former military lawyers, sitting senators from BOTH parties, and international law scholars have independently described using words like "war crimes" and "murder." What makes this collection worse isn't just the incidents — it's the denials that followed nearly every single one.
1. The Sept. 2, 2025 "double-tap" boat strike
U.S. forces struck an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean. The first strike left two survivors clinging to the wreckage. The Washington Post reported that Hegseth gave a spoken directive that "the order was to kill everybody," and that a Special Operations commander then ordered a second strike specifically to comply with those instructions, killing both survivors. The denial: Hegseth called the story "fabricated, inflammatory, and derogatory reporting" and, at a Cabinet meeting, mocked the press for "planting fake stories" and using "the fog of war" as something reporters "don't understand." Weeks later, Adm. Frank "Mitch" Bradley told Congress in a classified briefing that he'd received no explicit "kill them all" order — but also testified that he ordered the second strike himself because he judged the survivors "still legitimate targets," since they could theoretically have radioed other traffickers. The Washington Post has stood by its original reporting in full. In other words: the specific wording of Hegseth's order is genuinely disputed, but nobody — not Hegseth, not Bradley, not the White House — has ever disputed that survivors of the first strike were deliberately killed in a follow-up strike, which is the part legal scholars actually call the war crime.
2. The wider boat-strike campaign (Sept.–Dec. 2025 and ongoing)
At least 25 strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific between September and December 2025 killed approximately 95 to 100+ people. The denial: the administration has never publicly released evidence that any of those killed were actual drug traffickers, despite repeated requests from Senate Armed Services Committee leaders of both parties — Chairman Roger Wicker (R) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D) — for the underlying legal authorizations and full strike video. Sen. Tom Cotton insisted "they're all valid targets" based on unreleased intelligence; Reed says the administration has "repeatedly denied" Congress's requests for the basic paperwork behind a campaign that's killed over a hundred people with zero trials.
3. Retaliating against lawmakers who told troops they can refuse illegal orders (Nov. 2025–Feb. 2026)
Six members of Congress released a video reminding servicemembers they can lawfully refuse illegal orders. The administration referred them for FBI investigation. The denial/outcome: the administration never framed this publicly as retaliation, but a federal judge saw through it anyway — in February 2026, ruling that Hegseth had "trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees," and noting that prosecutors failed to convince even a single grand juror to indict any of the six. Keep in mind the axiom that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.
4. The Minab girls' school strike (Feb. 28, 2026)
A Tomahawk cruise missile struck Shajareh Tayyebeh Primary School in Minab during the opening hours of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Death toll estimates range from 156 to over 175, the overwhelming majority young girls. The denial: President Trump publicly declared on March 7 that the strike was "done by Iran" — blaming Iran for bombing its own schoolchildren — even as U.S. military investigators were already privately concluding the opposite. Days later, the Pentagon's own investigation determined the U.S. was likely responsible, attributing it to an "intelligence failure" involving AI-assisted targeting that failed to register the building's long-standing status as a civilian school. Missile fragments recovered at the site and video geometry analyzed by independent munitions experts both confirmed a U.S. Tomahawk, not an Iranian weapon.
5. The Lamerd sports hall strike — same day, same war (Feb. 28, 2026)
Hours after the Minab strike, a Precision Strike Missile — a weapon designed to detonate above its target and spray tungsten pellets for maximum casualties — hit a sports hall where a girls' volleyball team was training, killing at least 21 and wounding over 100. The denial: this is the boldest one on the list. CENTCOM didn't just deflect blame — it denied the strike happened at all, stating flatly that "U.S. forces did not launch any strikes at any time into the city of Lamerd or anywhere within 30 miles," and specifically denied using a PrSM, claiming the munition in circulating video was actually an Iranian Hoveyzeh missile. The New York Times and BBC Verify independently analyzed the same footage and munition fragments and concluded a U.S. PrSM was used — a weapon CENTCOM's own public statements elsewhere confirmed had just made its "combat debut" in the opening hours of that exact operation.
6. The "no quarter" declaration (March 13, 2026)
Days after the school and sports-hall strikes, Hegseth publicly declared U.S. forces would give "no quarter" to Iranian combatants — military language for refusing to accept surrender, and a direct violation of international humanitarian law according to Oona Hathaway, a legal scholar and former special counsel to the Pentagon's own general counsel. The denial: unlike the other incidents, Hegseth never walked this one back — the Pentagon simply never addressed the legal exposure publicly, despite an internal hypothetical legal memo circulated among national security law circles warning it could expose him to prosecution under the War Crimes Act.
7. Dismantling the guardrails entirely (March 2026)
At the same press conference, Hegseth dismissed rules of engagement as "stupid" and boasted of operating with "maximum authorities," unbound by international institutions. Days later, it emerged the Pentagon had rolled back antipersonnel landmine restrictions, advanced cluster munitions procurement, and stripped civilian-protection language from the 2026 National Defense Strategy. The context: members of Congress noted Hegseth had already fired the top military lawyers responsible for law-of-war compliance back in February 2025 — a full year before Minab and Lamerd — meaning the guardrails weren't just rhetorically dismissed, they'd been structurally removed in advance.
Commentary: Every item on this list was independently documented — by the Washington Post, the New York Times, BBC Verify, Amnesty International, sitting Republican and Democratic senators, and a federal judge — and nearly every single one comes with an official denial that later collapsed under its own weight. CENTCOM didn't just defend a strike, it insisted an entire attack never happened thirty miles in any direction, while sitting on footage of the exact weapon it claimed wasn't there. That's not the fog of war. That's a Secretary of Defense's department lying to the public's face, on the record, in writing, and getting caught by the same reporters he calls fake news.
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| Image generated by ChatGPT |
Sources:
- https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-stands-hegseth-kill-them-all-report-boat-strike-despite-testimony-denial (boat strike denial)
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/who-is-adm-bradley-lawmakers-will-hear-from-navy-admiral-who-reportedly-ordered-attack-that-killed-boat-strike-survivors (Bradley testimony)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2025_United_States_military_video_controversy (Kelly v. Hegseth ruling)
- https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/iran-school-strike-minab-tomahawk/ (Minab school strike, Tomahawk evidence)
- https://www.centcom.mil/MEDIA/PUBLIC-RELEASES/Article/4448978/centcom-refutes-media-claims-of-us-strikes-in-lamerd-iran/ (CENTCOM's Lamerd denial, primary source)
- https://www.aol.com/articles/iranian-foreign-ministry-official-us-231222334.html (PrSM combat debut confirmation + CENTCOM denial side by side)
- https://www.commondreams.org/news/hegseth-no-quarter-international-law ("no quarter" declaration)
- https://stanton.house.gov/2026/3/stanton-colleagues-demand-answers-on-reported-u-s-strike-on-iranian-girls-school (fired JAG lawyers, Feb 2025)
AI disclosure: ⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance. All facts are sourced from the linked articles and corroborating sources.
