Mark Kelly Rips Pete Hegseth's Hypocrisy After Video Of Hegseth Saying U.S. Troops Can't Obey 'Unlawful Orders' Resurfaces

The United States Manual of Courts-Martial states all service members have a duty to disobey an order that "a [person] of ordinary sense and understanding would know to be illegal," thus negating a defense plea of superior orders.

Superior orders—a.k.a. the "just following orders"—defense had been used by United States military members in the past with varying success, but was changed irrevocably by the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II.

The superior orders defense posits that a person—civilian, military or police—should not be considered guilty of committing crimes if they were ordered to commit the action by a superior officer or higher ranking civilian official.

During a Tuesday interview on CNN's OutFront with Erin Burnett, Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly remarked on a 2016 video of MAGA Republican President Donald Trump's Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, defending the requirement of military members to refuse illegal orders from a President.

When Senator Kelly and other Democratic members of Congress stated the same fact about unlawful orders in a video addressing active military members, Hegseth called it a "seditious act."

The newly resurfaced Hegseth video led the Arizona Democrat—a retired NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain, combat aviator, and Gulf War veteran—to ask on X and on CNN what had changed for former Fox News weekend host and Princeton ROTC graduate Hegseth.

On X, Senator Kelly shared the 2016 Hegseth video, captioned:

"Pete Hegseth says he’s going to court-martial me for saying the same exact thing he said 9 years ago. What changed for Pete? Well to start, he spends all day thinking about how he can suck up to Trump. When Trump says jump, he says how high."

Other Democrats targeted by the White House and Hegseth for sharing the truth, also shared the Hegseth video on X.

On CNN, Senator Kelly expressed much the same sentiment.

What he and other members of Congress, whom the Trump administration dubbed the "Seditious Six" to distract from the truth, said in their video was correct, both in 2016 when Hegseth said it and in 2025 when they did.

Servicemembers have not only a right, but also a responsibility to reject any unlawful order from any member of their chain of command, up to and including the Commander in Chief.

In 2016 while President Barack Obama was still in office, Hegseth told a conservative forum:

"I do think there have to be consequences for abject war crimes. If you’re doing something that is just completely unlawful and ruthless, then there is a consequence for that.

"That’s why the military said it won’t follow unlawful orders from their Commander in Chief."

"There’s a standard, there’s an ethos, there’s a belief that we are above what so many things that our enemies or others would do."

Hegseth is currently facing allegations of war crimes himself over attacks on Venezuelan fishing boats in international waters, especially for ordering the killing of two survivors of an initial attack that destroyed their boat.

@erinburnettoutfront/Instagram

Maryland Governor Wes Moore/Facebook

The Trump administration has claimed, without providing any proof, that all the boats they attacked were piloted and crewed by violent gang members for the purpose of drug trafficking.

The U.S. military attacks have ensured no survivors remain to refute the White House's unsubstantiated claims. Such actions have raised war crimes allegations against Trump, Hegseth, and others by foreign governments, human rights organizations, and members of the United States Congress.

You can watch the CNN segment here:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Burnett also shared a shorter clip of her interview with Senator Kelly on her Instagram account.

After watching the 2016 video of Hegseth, Senator Kelly told CNN's Burnett:

"It’s exactly what we said. But when we said it, Pete Hegseth … says what we said was false and reckless. And I think it begs the question, ‘What has changed?’"

"And it’s pretty obvious what has changed is we have an unqualified Secretary of Defense who only cares about sucking up to this President."

Senator Kelly later added, referring to Hegseth:

"This guy is not a leader. He is, by far, the least qualified Secretary of Defense we've ever had."

"He runs around the stage talking about lethality and warrior ethos and hunting and killing people. That is not the words of a responsible Secretary of Defense."

Others agreed with Kelly's summation of the situation with Hegseth.

@erinburnettoutfront/Instagram

@erinburnettoutfront/Instagram

During the military tribunals held by the four primary Allies of World War II, Nazi war criminals, including Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, were not excused for their war time crimes despite claiming to have been "just following orders."

The Allies' 1945 London Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which represented the first time victors in war came to an agreement on the "principle of individual responsibility for the crime of attacking the international peace," determined the superior orders defense was no longer enough to escape punishment, but merely a possible reason to lessen it.

During the 1971 court martial of United States Army Lieutenant William Calley, the superior orders defense came to be called the “Nuremberg defense” when Calley's lawyers argued the Lieutenant was only following orders when he led his platoon during the March 1968 slaughter of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in what became known as the My Lai Massacre.

Calley was convicted of murdering at least 70 unarmed male and female Vietnamese civilians of various ages—one of the victims murdered by Calley was two years old—with some estimates of the total death toll at the My Lai 4 cluster of hamlets in Quang Ngai Province at more than 500 men, women, and children.

Gary Solis, Marine company commander in Vietnam turned judge advocate general serving as a military prosecutor, defense lawyer and judge, told Military Times:

“I believe that is the key result of Nuremberg—obedience to orders is no longer a defense to war crimes. That was not new Nuremberg law that was being created in the courtroom, but rather new enforcement."

"That’s the basis on which [the Nazis] were convicted. That was new enforcement—the unspoken awareness on the part of civilized nations [of the duty to hold war criminals to account]."

November 20 marked the 80th anniversary of the start of the Nazi war crimes trials at Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice.

United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert H. Jackson—serving as chief prosecutor in the trial of Reichsmarschall Göring—said in his opening statement:

"The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility."

"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated."

The outcome of the Nuremberg trials changed the United States Uniform Code of Military Justice for the better by not only allowing, but also demanding, that servicemembers uphold the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the nation they serve regardless of who orders them to do otherwise.

This fact is something Senator Kelly knows and something Hegseth, as Secretary of Defense, should know.