THE PENTAGON — Following newly established legal precedent, the Pentagon announced today it is recalling Secretary of Defense (and also War) Pete Hegseth to active duty to face charges of violating nearly the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice.

“Secretary Hegseth has made accountability his watchword,” said General Counsel Earl Matthews. “And as he frequently reminds us in staff meetings, he is not above the law. So, based on overwhelming evidence that he has flouted the UCMJ in virtually every waking moment since he hit puberty, we are reinstating his prior rank of tabless bitch Major so he can be appropriately court-martialed.”

The decision followed a legal precedent set last week when the Department publicly condemned Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired Navy captain, for the radical act of suggesting that service members should not follow illegal orders.

“Look, it’s not my place to say that the secretary’s belief that ‘orders are presumed to be lawful’ didn’t exactly fly at Nuremberg,” said Matthews. “But if we're applying the UCMJ retroactively to veterans, it only makes sense to start with the guy live-tweeting war crimes.”

Deputy General Counsel Charles Young confirmed that Hegseth’s service — from active duty to IRR to National Guard from 2003 to 2024 — was now fully open for legal review under the newly established Twitter Doctrine.

“And we’re starting time now,” promised Young. “Technically we started about five seconds after the Department announced an investigation of Senator Kelly on Twitter — social media being, as everyone knows, where all ironclad legal proceedings begin."

"The instant Hegseth tagged Kelly as one of the Seditious Six, I was like ‘sure, let’s start with wrongful interference with an adverse administrative proceeding' (Article 131g). Maybe you’ve never imposed unlawful command influence via tweet, but then, you’re no Pete Hegseth.”

Young rattled off a sampling of charges, noting they barely scratched the surface:

“Those flight hours wasted cosplaying with Top Gun and Special Operations Forces, his bloated security details, giving his cabinet buddies military housing — all slam dunk cases of wrongful disposition of military property (Article 108). Texting war plans to his wife and a journalist over compromised channels? That’s an easy failure to obey a regulation (Article 92), misbehavior before the enemy (Article 99), aiding the enemy (Article 103b), endangerment (Article 114), and offenses concerning government computers (Article 123).