Hegseth calls for second Pentagon investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly over weapons-stockpile remarks

On Sunday evening, May 10, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media that the Pentagon's legal counsel would review Sen. Mark Kelly's appearance earlier that day on CBS' "Face the Nation," accusing the Arizona Democrat of "blabbing on TV (falsely & dumbly) about a CLASSIFIED Pentagon briefing he received" and asking whether Kelly had violated his oath "again." The referral is the second Pentagon investigation Hegseth has sought against Kelly, a retired Navy captain and former astronaut who sits on the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence committees.

Kelly's televised remarks concerned the depletion of U.S. munitions stockpiles during the Iran war. After Pentagon briefings on Tomahawk missiles, ATACMS, and Patriot interceptors, Kelly told host Margaret Brennan he found it "shocking how deep we have gone into these magazines" and that "the American people are less safe" as a result. Kelly responded to Hegseth's referral by posting video of Hegseth's own testimony at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing the prior week, writing: "We had this conversation in a public hearing a week ago and you said it would take 'years' to replenish some of these stockpiles. That's not classified, it's a quote from you."

The May 10 referral lands while Hegseth's first effort against Kelly is on appeal. That earlier action, announced in January 2026, sought to reduce Kelly's retired military rank — and thereby his retirement pay — and issue a letter of censure in response to a November 2025 video in which Kelly and five other Democrats with military or intelligence backgrounds urged service members to refuse unlawful orders. A federal judge enjoined the rank-reduction effort earlier in 2026 as unconstitutionally retaliatory; per CNN, a majority of a three-judge D.C. Circuit panel reviewing the government's appeal "threw cold water" on the Justice Department's arguments in the week before the new referral. The Pentagon, asked by CNN for comment on the May 10 referral, pointed reporters back to Hegseth's social-media post; Kelly's office did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.