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Categories Politics

Department of Defense Sends Military JAG Attorneys to D.C. to Help Prosecute Crimes

August 22, 2025

Source: https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/law

 

President Trump began to deploy some 800 D.C. National Guardsmen to the nation’s capital on August 11th.  Since evoking section 740 of the Home Rule Act, which allows the President to deploy troops for 30 days, several other states have vowed to send troops as well.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have all pledged over 1,100 additional troops to help support the D.C. Guards’ mission, with West Virginia thus far committing the most.  Combined with the D.C Guard, the total deployment will be around 2,000 troops.

Now, according to an NBC exclusive report, the Department of Defense is poised to send members of the Judge Advocate General Corps (JAG), to D.C. to assist with prosecutions as special assistant U.S. attorneys.  In Washington D.C. exclusively, the U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutes both federal and local crimes.

NBC reports:

Twenty members of the Defense Department are set to begin working as special assistant U.S. attorneys — federal prosecutors — in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia next week, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Tim Lauer, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, confirmed the move, saying members of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps would be joining the office, though he did not know how long the detail would last.

According to Georgetown professor Steve Vladeck, the last time the Guard was deployed to D.C. was in 1983.  At the time, the Supreme Court ruled that this “violated a statute that bans military officers from exercising the duties of a civil office.”  Vladeck addressed this issue in a 2017 Lawfare article:

“Congress responded quickly in the Department of Defense Authorization Act for 1984, enacting a series of amendments to the civil office ban in explicit response to the OLC memo. Among other things, the amendments narrowed the scope of prohibited ‘civil offices’ to an office (1) ‘that is an elective office,’ (2) ‘that requires an appointment by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,’ or (3) ‘that is a position in the Executive Schedule under [5 U.S.C. §§ 5312–17].’ The amendments went on specifically to authorize the holding of civil offices by active-duty servicemembers in cases not already prohibited, presumably with an eye toward allowing JAG lawyers to serve as SAUSAs going forward.”

In Dalmazzi v. United States, SCOTUS opined that:

After and because of the 1983 amendments, it is no longer possible for a military officer to violate § 973(b)(2)(A) “in furtherance of assigned official duties”; indeed, the law today expressly authorizes such assignments.

Statute 973(b)(2)(B) states that “An officer to whom this subsection applies may hold or exercise the functions of a civil office in the Government of the United States that is not described in subparagraph (A) when assigned or detailed to that office or to perform those functions.”

 

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