Chrissy Houlahan Exposes Hegseth: “Release the Video — This Looks Like a War Crime.

🎬 The Unedited Truth: Hegseth’s Hypocrisy Crumbles Before a Textbook War Crime

The walls of Secretary Pete Hegseth’s carefully constructed narrative are not just cracking; they are collapsing, brick by disgraceful brick. The latest, most devastating attack on his credibility comes not from a political rival, but from Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, a Democratic lawmaker armed with the unimpeachable authority of military service and intelligence experience. She has done what the administration fears most: she has demanded the public see the full, unedited video of the September 2nd strike—the one that allegedly killed shipwrecked survivors—and challenged Hegseth’s elaborate, self-serving deception.

Houlahan’s demand is brutally simple: If Hegseth has nothing to hide, why is he fighting transparency?

As a member of both the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, Houlahan brings a professional clarity that cuts through the political fog. She explicitly stated what the public has only inferred: the public needs to see the video because the Washington establishment is incapable of agreeing on basic reality. This is an indictment not just of Hegseth, but of the entire congressional ecosystem that allows such deliberate, damning confusion to flourish. The reports she has heard paint a horrifying picture: literally, “people clinging for their lives to very small pieces of the hull of the boat.” To have others dismiss this as a “righteous killing” demands that the truth—the unfiltered, visual truth—be shown to the American people.

The Textbook War Crime and the War on Law

Houlahan minced no words: even if one accepts the administration’s reckless justification of a “new war” on cartels—a war declared not by Congress, as the Constitution requires, but unilaterally by the Executive—the act itself remains a clear, textbook war crime. This is not a nuanced legal debate. The military’s own manuals explicitly forbid firing upon the shipwrecked.

This action is not an accident of command; it is the inevitable consequence of Hegseth’s ideological assault on the rule of law. The sheer, breathtaking hypocrisy of the Secretary is laid bare when one compares his current actions to his own past rhetoric. In 2016, Hegseth himself eloquently stated the necessity of military integrity, proclaiming that there “have to be consequences for abject war crimes” and that the military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander-in-chief.”

What changed, Pete? The answer is obvious: his fealty shifted from the principles of the Constitution to the political protection of an administration that champions lawlessness. Now, the man who once championed accountability for war crimes is fighting to cover up what his own former peers are labeling a murder and a war crime, actively mocking the international and military codes of justice. This mindset makes him a hazard, a liability for this administration, for this country, for the Department of Defense, and for the world.

Sedition, Lawful Orders, and the Corrosion of Ethos

Houlahan’s call for transparency is inextricably linked to the controversial video she and five other lawmakers—all veterans or intelligence professionals—released, urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. This basic restatement of military law—a legal duty for every service member—was met with an astonishing, hysterical reaction from Republicans, including a resolution labeling it “dangerous, seditious, and encouraging disloyalty.”

The audacity of this charge is staggering. When stating the law is deemed an act of sedition, the administration reveals its true position: The law is an enemy to be ignored, and loyalty is only to the person of the President, not the Constitution. Hegseth, in a further act of profound hypocrisy, personally condemned the lawmakers, demonstrating that his former belief in the duty to refuse an illegal order evaporated the moment the orders were issued by his political patron.

This pattern—dismantling the offices of the Judge Advocate General (JAG), undermining the Inspector General (IG), declaring war without congressional approval, and now defending the killing of disabled individuals—is what drove Houlahan and her colleagues to issue their warning. It was not a reaction to one strike; it was a response to the entire, sustained corrosion of the military ethos under Hegseth’s watch.

The unedited video, which reportedly shows the final, horrific seconds of the shipwrecked, has now become the single point of leverage in this fight for constitutional governance. Hegseth’s refusal to release it is not an act of national security; it is an act of political self-preservation. It is the final piece of evidence that the administration knows the truth is indefensible and its legal justifications are a cynical, after-the-fact lie.

The American people deserve to see what is being done in their name. Until the full, unedited footage is released, the only logical conclusion is the one Houlahan implies: the Secretary of Defense is hiding a war crime, and he must be held accountable.