US Air Force Officer Charged for Criticizing Trump & Visas Revoked

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1:54This is Bloomberg Law with June Grosso from Bloomberg Radio. On July 1st, at a protest on the steps of the Capitol, U.S. Air Force Major Jason Watson called for the impeachment of President Donald Trump for violating the Constitution by ordering military action against Iran. When the president of the United States orders military action against foreign countries, absent an emergency scenario where American interests are under imminent dire threat, as was done with Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, that's an unconstitutional usurpation of Congress's authority and a violation of the War Powers Clause. These violations resulted in the deaths of 13 service members and injuries of hundreds more.

2:48For this, the president and vice president must be impeached, convicted, and removed. After Watson, who served in the Air Force for 17 years, repeated his criticisms of Trump in an interview on CNN, he was criminally charged under the Uniform Code of Military Justice with violating Article 88 for contemptuous remarks about Trump, violating Article 92 for disobeying orders, and violating Article 133 for conduct unbecoming an officer. The Article 88 charges are exceedingly rare, so much so that there have been only a few instances since the modern code of military justice was enacted 75 years ago.

3:38And this appears to be the only case where an officer of Watson's rank has been charged. Joining me is Joshua Kastenberg, a professor at the University of New Mexico Law School and a former judge and lawyer in the U.S. Air Force. Josh, let's start with the charges under Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibits officers from using contemptuous words against the president, the vice president, Congress, and other U.S. representatives. Well, those charges, first of all, they're quite ancient. They go back to, in a sense, Thomas Jefferson, when the first articles of war were being rewritten from the British.

4:23And one of the things that was changed from the British article to what we now know as Article 88 is the U.S. limited it to the chain of command in the military, whereas contemptuous words against the government as a whole could be a means for prosecuting people in the old British Army. So it's an old charge, but it's a charge that has been used in a very selective manner over the years since that time. And what I mean by a selective manner is that we have seen generals and admirals, sometimes in their retired states, but they're still subject to the UCMJ making disparaging words against the president.

5:05For example, Bill Clinton being called a draft dodger. But in the present time, you can go back to the Vietnam War. There was a lieutenant who did that. And then you can jump ahead to the president. And we've got this major fisher who's done that as well. But there have been hundreds of others who've done it and haven't been charged. So do you think it's the high profile nature of this? I mean, he he was arrested on the steps of the Capitol and also he went on CNN. Yeah, I mean, he certainly invited it on himself and he did it with full knowledge because he apparently had been warned beforehand not to do this.

5:43And so he pulled one of the hey world, look at me. That doesn't take away from the fact that he may be very sincere in his beliefs, but he certainly did it in a manner that baited the administration to go after him. As far as whether remarks are contemptuous, what is the standard for determining whether they're contemptuous? So remarks tend to be considered contemptuous if they're made in a manner that would undermine confidence and the reliability of the chain of command. And so you can go back, for example, to the Vietnam War, and there was this army captain, and he was a noted dermatologist.

6:22He was training corpsmen. His name was Captain Levy. And he started advising students who were enlisted members in the United States Army's medical corps not to go to Vietnam by arguing that it was an imperialistic, it was a white man's war, it was making the rich richer, it was immoral and unconstitutional. and, you know, he had a position of authority over them. And so he was convicted in a court martial. It went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court upheld the conviction in a case we know as Parker v. Levy. Today, I think one of the things the defense counsel will raise is the idea that this major obviously did what he's accused of doing as a matter of a factual basis, but the idea that he would undermine the chain of command and military discipline is unprovable.

7:14And that is a burden on the government to have to prove. Does the prosecution have to show that what he said was contemptuous rather than just critical? And what's the line? Well, yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right in asking that question. Words have meaning, and they particularly have meaning in the law. The prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt to the court-martial, whether it's composed of officers or it's a bench trial, but it is the prosecution's duty to prove that the words were contemptuous. So what might separate the major from, say, Lieutenant Howe in 1967, who stood outside of Fort Bliss with a sandwich board calling Lyndon Johnson a war criminal, is that it's unclear to me whether the major engaged in any superfluous or mean-spirited name-calling, and rather just exercised what he believed his prerogative to warn Congress about conditions in the military and how the chain of command might be acting in an unconstitutional manner.

8:23That might not clear the hurdle of contempt, but I suspect it will. People in the military don't have the same First Amendment rights that the rest of us do. Yeah, you're absolutely correct. I mean, one of the things that you learn when you're in ROTC or at the academy or at officer training programs is that you are surrendering to the federal government some of your free speech rights. And that includes the right to be politically engaged in a military status. But, you know, this administration, and I mean both Trump administrations, has done more to water down the political-military barrier, and they've instead politicized the military to an unusual degree, that they've set an example that it's okay to cross the line.

9:13And you see it in the speeches that Secretary of Defense Hegseth has made to uniform personnel, the speeches the president makes at the academy graduations, and just basically their public comments and the overuse of the military to promote the president's ideology. There's no equal to that in my lifetime. And so I suspect one of the things that this major's attorneys are going to argue is that it's the president himself who's moved the definitions of what political activity and contemptuous language are. And therefore, that is the standard by which our client must be judged. And therefore, they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt he's guilty of contempt.

10:01He's also charged, so it's three violations of Article 88, five violations of Article 92, and two violations of Article 133. So Article 92 is a failure to obey lawful orders or regulations. And regardless of who's sitting in the White House, there are these age-old military cultural rules that are designed to keep the military a trustworthy institution by keeping it out of politics that have been written into Department of Defense regulations and instructions and then Air Force instructions, Army regulations, Navy and Marine Corps instructions and regulations. All of those regulations have the force of law as long as they don't violate a legally passed statute limiting the military or the First Amendment.

10:58But for those regulations and instructions, you have to assume going in that they are constitutionally permissible. And I can tell you that demonstrating in a military uniform for any cause without permission, whether it's for wildlife preservation, children's rights, or a political rally that's partisan, if you don't have permission to be in uniform and you're part of it, you've crossed the line. Now, again, selective prosecution is something that I'm sure the defense counsel in this case will raise, because they'll point out the fact that the president has used the military at his partisan rallies.

11:35No one there has been prosecuted, so we'll see what happens. As for Article 133, that's the easiest of all the charges to prove. It's called conduct, unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, and it basically throws it out to the court-martial whether or not this major crossed the line. The prosecution doesn't really have to prove that there's a threat to good order and discipline. It's just rather whether or not this major has crossed the line against the norms and become something of a criminal embarrassment to the military. I mean, the classic line of that as an officer who goes and does something legal like gambling, but falls into debt and can't pay the debt back.

12:17But you do see examples of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for lots of different things that are ordinarily legal, including, you know, things like appearing in softcore pornographic movies or, you know, having multiple partners of a polyamorous nature and it gets out. But this one, I think of all the charges, this is the easiest to prove. But as a jurisdictional nature, it's possible that defense could prevail on the military judge that their client is selectively prosecuted in violation of his constitutional rights. It hasn't actually been decided yet whether Major Watson will have to face trial.

12:59Yeah, well, the thing is that he's held in pretrial confinement, which is very unusual for an officer. I mean, even officers who are accused of crimes like violent crimes, like rape, generally don't end up being placed in pretrial confinement. So first we have to wait and see whether a military judge, or if they go and try to file in U.S. District Court, whether a U.S. District Court judge would order him released from pretrial confinement under the argument that, look, he's not a threat to good order and discipline. He hasn't committed a violent crime. He's not charged with espionage. This is just something that normal human beings can do in the United States.

13:43So even before we were to get to a trial, that could become an issue. Then this has to go through the military's equivalent of a grand jury. That's done by one individual. It's not really a grand jury, but it's the equivalent of a grand jury. It's a pretrial investigation. And then and only then would a senior military officer known as a general court-martial convening authority, and usually those are major generals or, you know, rear admirals, upper half or higher, lieutenant generals, four-star generals and the like, able to convene a general court-martial against this major. So it's a process.

14:22And one of the things that makes this process different is that I think the government has opened the door to the possibility of the Defense Council being able to stop this process in its tracks through some sort of appeal to the United States District Court. I thought that when you're in the military, you're subject to the jurisdiction of the military courts. How would he get this into federal district court? Well, when you can prove to the federal courts that the government is either incompetent, has violated your client's rights to a constitutional degree, or has committed a major infraction of the law, you can get it into the U.S.

15:06District Court. It's a very high bar. But if you remember the case of Lieutenant Aaron Watata, Aaron Watata did not want to go and comply with his orders to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. and the prosecution was getting ready to prosecute him in a court-martial for failure to go, there was some problem with the handling of evidence of the discovery requirement to give Watada's attorneys all of the government's evidence. The defense counsel shrewdly went to U.S. District Court, and the U.S. District Court shut that case down, and the military was never able to go forward and prosecute Lieutenant Aaron Watada for something that, at least facially, Aaron Watata did, which was refuse to comply with orders.

15:53But for every Lieutenant Watata, there are hundreds of people who the military more or less functions as it's supposed to do, and they can't get into U.S. district court. What makes this case different is its uniqueness. It seems like they're charging him in many different ways for the same act. Yeah, well, that's one area where the military justice system can misfire, because a military trial judge, just like a state criminal trial judge or a U.S. district court judge, has to make sure that the charges do not overlap to such a degree as to violate the Constitution's prohibition against double jeopardy.

16:36And I've taken a look at the way this case has been charged. And one of the features of it to me is that there is enough of an overlap to create a constitutional issue in this case. A military trial judge could say to the government two things. Number one, you're going to have to decide which of these charges you're going forward on and which you're not because there's significant overlap. or I'll throw it out to the court-martial to do that and let the officer sitting on the court-martial decide whether your client's guilty or not, but they won't be able to do it for all charges. They'll have to do it in what's known as the alternative, meaning he's either guilty of this charge or he's guilty of that charge, but you can't find them both, which you certainly could find him not guilty of all charges.

17:19So that's one possibility. The other possibility I could see a military judge doing is saying, I'm just going to consolidate a bunch of these charges if he's found guilty of them for the purpose of sentencing and do a singular charge. How fast does this military process move? If people think this is going to go to a court tomorrow, barring some miraculous dropping of the case against him or a plea agreement, it's not. It's a long process. Military justice is supposed to be quick and efficient, but it's become like just about any other criminal justice system, and it's not quick or efficient anymore.

17:57We'll keep track of what happens. Thanks so much for joining me, Josh. That's Professor Joshua Kastenberg of the University of New Mexico Law School. This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Now with ChatGPT work. I'm Carol Masser. Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Ventures is betting on a cheaper way to produce clean jet fuel and made its first investment from a fund that is backed by Alaska Air, American, and several other carriers. The investment is aimed at accelerating the commercialization of clean aviation fuel. The recipient is Boston-based Lydian, which is developing lower-carbon jet fuel made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide and is one of a growing number of companies developing next-generation clean jet fuel technology.

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21:24The ICE officer charged with shooting and injuring a man in Minneapolis has been released from a jail in Texas after a federal judge denied Minnesota's request to keep him in custody. Minnesota officials had filed a lawsuit earlier this month asking a judge to order the Texas governor to extradite Christian Castro so he could face four counts of assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime. But a judge sided with Texas, allowing Castro to be released and for Texas to continue weighing whether to comply with the extradition request or not. My guest is Leon Fresco, a partner at Holland & Knight and an expert in immigration law.

22:10Leon, does the Texas governor have the power to deny extradition to Minnesota? Well, so the extradition clause in the Constitution, and there's a statute, 18 U.S.C. Section 3182, makes extradition mandatory, not discretionary. So Ibot doesn't have lawful power to refuse, And the Supreme Court also said this as well in a case called Puerto Rico versus Branstad. So Governor Abbott can't really win this on the merit. But what he's doing is he's trying to win on the calendar. He's trying to say he's got a federal court to agree with him that this question isn't right because Abbott hasn't formally said no to the extradition.

22:56So that's a roadmap for indefinite delay. Just don't deny the extradition. Just say that you continually seek to analyze it and to try to see that, you know, this is a difficult decision. We need to try to get to the right decision here. And then the question is, well, will that ever be able to be resolved? Will the federal government end up bringing charges? Will Minnesota try to sue to compel this and say it's serving as a functional denial and try citing a flight risk and the need to, you know, stop this flight risk? And that's what we're going to have to wait and see here. I'm curious as to why Minnesota is trying to get this particular ICE officer.

23:38He faces assault counts and falsely reporting a crime and not the ICE officers who were involved in the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Prady, two U.S. citizens, during the Minneapolis Operation Metro surge in January of 2026. Where are they and what's happening to them? And there have been no charges in either of those shootings. There was a DOJ investigation in one of them in the Alex Pretty case, but DOJ didn't do an investigation in the Renee Good case. And in those situations in the Renee Good case, you had a bunch of Minnesota federal prosecutors resigning, including the acting U.S.

24:22attorney. And in the Alex Pretty case, they did do a civil rights investigation. And the agents were placed on administrative leave, but there were no charges to date in that one. Will we see civil lawsuits by Renee Good and Alex Preddy's family against the federal government or these ICE officers, or is that a no-go? So the problem with civil lawsuits is they're very, very difficult now because of some precedents that have happened in the Supreme Court. There was a Border Patrol precedent that happened, I want to say, two or three years ago, where they tried to sue the Border Patrol for Bivens Act claims, saying, you owe civilly for excessive force.

25:06And in that situation, what ended up happening was the Supreme Court said that this was not like a normal situation where the federal government violates your rights and you can sue them. In this situation, there's a problem with national security that the Border Patrol has to be able to take care of this national security concern. And so you can't sue under Bivens in that situation. Now, that was Border Patrol. The question is, would ICE end up being able to benefit from that same Border Patrol national security concerns argument? So it's very hard to sue the Border Patrol under Bivens. And would ICE get the benefit of that?

25:52We'd have to wait and see what the Supreme Court says, especially if it's inside the country. It's not at the border and it's a U.S. citizen. It's not a foreign national. It seems like it'd be more likely that Bivens is not foreclosed, but it's going to be a tough call. I would bet that would be a 5-4 case or a 6-3 case either way. And then finally, the Federal Tort Claims Act, which is another suit that you can do. there's this thing called the discretionary function exception and a lot of times that discretionary function exception they're saying look these are tough calls from these officers in difficult situations and they're using personal judgment to try to stop a violent attack from happening and so it's very hard to sue them in under the federal court claims act in that situation well there is no statute of limitations on murder charges right so two years from now a new A different administration could charge them for murder.

26:46There's no doubt about that. And we'll have to wait and see if that ends up happening. Okay, stay with me, Leon. Coming up next on the Bloomberg Law Show, we'll talk about the Trump administration's plans for the single largest mass revocation of visas in U.S. history. This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Now with ChatGPT work. I'm Carol Masser. Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures is betting on a cheaper way to produce clean jet fuel and made its first investment from a fund that is backed by Alaska Air, American, and several other carriers. The investment is aimed at accelerating the commercialization of clean aviation fuel.

27:28The recipient is Boston-based Lydian, which is developing lower-carbon jet fuel made from hydrogen and carbon dioxide and is one of a growing number of companies developing next-generation clean jet fuel technology. Lydian says it can reduce capital expenses by more than 50 % compared with competing technologies. Lowering those costs is seen as crucial to making sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, commercially viable, as it remains far more expensive than conventional jet fuel. Today, clean fuels represent a tiny fraction of the overall market. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute, brought to you by ChachiPT.