In Defense of Rob Green

You may not know Rob Green, but even if you don't, he's currently fighting for you in ways you may not even recognize.

There's a struggle still going on right now within the military that impacts all Americans, even those who have never served in uniform. That's because policies implemented within the military often serve as a harbinger of what's to come in society at large. Right or wrong, good or bad, the military is one of the most important pillars of our society. This importance extends beyond the obvious martial prowess. The armed forces also maintain a significant cultural gravitas. If healthy, the culture in the military contributes to overall societal health and prosperity. However, if corrupt and putrid, as our military currently is, it likewise contributes in no small way to the broader festering rot across the country.

The clearest recent example of this is the military covid shot mandate, implemented by then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on August 24, 2021.

This is where Rob Green comes in.

Rob Green

Navy Commander Rob Green doesn't need me to defend him. He's already on the side of truth, righteousness, and the law. Rob is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate that actually internalized what he learned there, unlike many other graduates who have since rejected the values imparted to them at Annapolis. Rob is also a man of faith with strong moral convictions. He’s a married father of seven.

He holds a deep desire to do what’s right, even if that means openly challenging tyranny.

I don't mean that in the artificially moralized way in which each side of a political divide may try to paint their efforts as a crusade against the actions of the other side.

I mean quite literally that Rob Green is in a fight against tyranny as he stands against those within the Department of Defense, and broader federal government apparatus, that have broken the law and continue to cover for their crimes to this day. Over the past few years, these crimes have resulted in the deaths, physical injuries, and other harms suffered by untold numbers of Americans.

Rob has refused to allow DoD to get away with the crimes that have impacted not only the lives of service members but also the overall readiness of our military formations.

Rob is a true leader amid a profession that used to build these types of officers, but has since clearly abandoned that endeavor. Rob appears to be among the last of a dying breed - a military man of honor that takes his oaths and obligations seriously.

I’m proud to know Rob and to consider him a friend. I admire him for having the courage that very few do, even in a setting that ostensibly selects for that exact trait.

Last week on July 9, 2025, Rob announced on his X account that his Navy leadership had opened an investigation into comments he had made about the actions of senior military leaders.

Central to the investigation was Rob’s usage of language that characterized senior officers of being “domestic enemies of the Constitution.”

Those unfamiliar with Rob, the situation, or the laws broken by DoD may assume at first glance that such charged language might warrant an investigation. They might suggest that a uniformed service member can’t make that type of claim about his superiors. Others might remind us that an investigation in and of itself doesn't necessarily imply guilt and that we should await the findings and conclusions.

However, this situation is several years in the making and Rob's position has been consistent.

Bold, but consistent.

As Rob mentions in an X post made on June 13, 2025, he is a whistleblower.

He attached to the same June 13 post a screenshot of a memo dated 7 January 2022 that he had sent to Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees.

In the memo, seen above, Rob makes it clear that he was reaching out to Members of Congress because of continued discriminatory action within the Navy dealing with religious accommodation requests for the covid shots. Rob had previously submitted a complaint against Navy leaders. This complaint became instrumental in securing a preliminary injunction in a federal court case involving other Navy personnel. However, the Navy maintained its original policy of denying religious accommodation requests, prompting Rob to state in the memo that “The Navy has proven incapable of policing itself.”

The memo above was submitted to Members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees three and a half years ago.

So, why the investigation now? What has changed?

Rob is accurate in his claim that senior military leaders have acted in open defiance of their oaths to support and defend the Constitution. This may be a painful truth, but it's the truth nonetheless. Rob is by no means the only one to have made these statements. (I have made very similar claims here, here, here, here, here, here, and in plenty of other writings, videos, or interviews. Of course, I’m out of the military and Rob still serves.)

Are we to remain silent as military leaders violate their oaths of office and put American lives and liberties at risk?

In the July 9 post, Rob even notes that the current Secretary of Defense has acknowledged (here and here) that the covid shot mandate was unlawful.

As Rob makes clear in the same post, he has been consistent in calling out these unlawful actions.

So, again I ask, why the investigation now? What conditions in the environment have changed between now and a few years ago? If anything, Rob has been vindicated. And what will the result of the investigation be? Could this end Rob’s career? What does this portend for others in the military or in other sectors of the government or society?

The Navy’s recent actions against Rob can only be considered reprisals against an honest officer with the courage to tell the truth and uphold his oath to support and defend the Constitution.

Overview

Rob's name has become synonymous with “military accountability” and that's for good reason. He has become the most outspoken voice on DoD’s unlawful covid-19 policies, including the covid shot mandate.

He has consistently called out senior military leaders for their unlawful and harmful actions. He informed his chain of command that their actions were depriving service members of their constitutionally protected rights.

He even wrote a book called Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines which was, appropriately, published on July 4, 2023.

He courageously published the book in his own name knowing full well that unscrupulous senior officers might take great umbrage at his characterization of their actions. Rob's book describes DoD’s policies and outlines the significant legal problems associated with them. He also shares the personal stories of various troops across the military that were directly impacted by DoD’s actions.

In a review I did just before its release, I had this to say about Rob’s book:

The most gripping part of the book is the series of accounts depicting the obstacles faced by those who resisted the mandate. Though their actions are unlikely to be romanticized via the same immortal imagery as Washington's Crossing of the Delaware or the Marines on Iwo Jima, the moral courage demonstrated by these men and women is just as real and just as uncommon as the physical bravery of those men of yore.

Rob rightly describes this as a spiritual fight. He frames the book first and foremost by his faith in God. He truly gives us an insider’s view into the battle for the soul of the military. Secondly, he offers a critical historical perspective by explaining the link between the Founding Fathers and the freedoms we have today. Within this historical context, he describes the intent behind the oath to the Constitution, and the moral courage required to fulfill that oath in the modern military. He expresses how this fight against the mandate is about so much more than resistance to a single injection; it is about defending individual liberty as our Founding Fathers intended.

The narrative is replete with examples of moral failings, legal obfuscations, and careerist maneuverings by government and DoD officials. Rob describes the collusion between DoD, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Department of Justice to obscure the legal problems of attempting to mandate a product that remained under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). He also explains the process used by senior Navy leaders to illegally implement a system of default disapprovals for service members requesting religious accommodations for their sincere faith-based objections to the vaccines. He even provides a clear example of a stark miscarriage of justice resulting from a judge’s mischaracterization of the law covering the administration of EUA products.

(I've also previously offered a much more complete review of Rob's book in video format here (done jointly with a full review of Matt Lohmeier’s great book)).

Rob’s book instantly became an ‘artifact’ in that it so aptly depicted the plight of the service member in attempting to negotiate the struggles corresponding to DoD’s unlawful actions. The story told was so much more than the sum of the pages and the words on each page. Many service members personally identified with the book, realizing that it accurately described what was happening as the military turned against its own troops, subjecting them to the deprivation of rights, unlawful coercion, discrimination, isolation, career-damaging measures, etc. In fact, copies of Rob’s books were mailed to the offices of senior leaders all across the military. (Learn more about the “Book Operation” here).

How did DoD leaders respond to Rob's book?

Silence.

They refused to react, at least publicly, in any way. They must have known that their best course of action was to ignore the book; even publicly renouncing it would perhaps lend some credibility to its assertions.

Rob's book title is telling. The title makes clear that there are service members bravely defending the Constitution within the ranks. But against whom? How is it “behind enemy lines?” Who is this “enemy?” Rob himself makes this point in his July 9 X post.

Rob's characterization of senior military leaders as “domestic enemies of the Constitution” isn't new.

And it certainly isn’t untrue.

The Declaration of Military Accountability

Rob's efforts to push for significant military reform as it pertains to internally operating within constitutional parameters didn't end with publishing a book. Within a few months of its release, he once again set out to put thoughts on paper.

In doing so, he penned what would become the Declaration of Military Accountability. This consisted of an open letter addressed to the American people, not military leadership. This distinction is important. After nearly two and a half years of appealing to senior officers to no avail, the idea was that the letter would be a higher appeal to We the People.

The letter was deliberately written in the spirit of American Founding documents, principally the Declaration of Independence. Rob’s structure and diction were particularly designed to replicate the “voice” of the Declaration of Independence and the sentiment of freedom that animated that document. In fact, Rob included an epigraph citing John Adams.

Rob wrote an initial draft that he then socialized with a small group of like-minded individuals, including myself, for feedback or recommended edits. Minor revisions were made and the document was slightly condensed in length.

The letter was then further passed around until a total of 231 brave souls signed their names to it. In essence, this was a declaration to the American people that the 231 signatories would do everything lawfully possible to ensure that the senior military leaders didn't destroy the institution.

The Declaration of Military Accountability

Find the Declaration of Military Accountability here.

Perhaps most boldly, the letter included the names of some of the most senior officers in the entire military along with the egregious actions they had carried out.

On January 1, 2024, the Declaration of Military Accountability was sent via email to the highest ranking officers in the US military. I sent that email. The idea was that even though the letter was addressed to the American people, we wanted senior Pentagon leaders to know how we thought and what we planned to do. We also wanted them to know we were announcing it to the American public.

Within minutes of sending that email to senior military leaders, I then posted on X about the email and included in the post a screenshot of the Declaration. This was the moment in which the Declaration of Military Accountability was first seen publicly.

We then posted the Declaration of Military Accountability to a website we created. On the website, any viewer could find the full text of the letter as well as the names of the 231 signatories. Additionally, we later included a petition that anyone who agreed with our push for accountability could sign. That petition gained tens of thousands of signatures.

This was NOT subversion from the shadows. It wasn't from the shadows at all - we openly proclaimed what we were doing - and it wasn't subversive.

It was counter-subversive.

We weren't the ones subverting the Constitution, the law, or military readiness. We weren't the ones depriving individuals of their rights. We weren't the ones pushing harmful shots. We weren't the ones destroying careers. We weren't the ones destroying trust. We weren't the ones that eradicated military readiness. We weren’t the ones openly destroying everything this country stands for.

We stood - and still stand - in direct opposition to those who have actively subverted the most important pillars of our nation and to this day continue to cover for their crimes.

We aimed to abide by the oaths we had made to support and defend the Constitution and directly challenged those who used their rank and position to tear down what many of us revere with a certain civic sanctity.

What was the response from senior military leaders to this Declaration of Military Accountability that mentioned many of them by name and was emailed directly to their inboxes on New Year's Day?

The same as the response to Rob's book.

Strategic silence.

Again, the idea must have been that to even offer a refutation of the Declaration would have been an acknowledgement of its existence and therefore possible merit.

Military Accountability Now

Throughout 2024, the sentiment of military accountability remained strong. A core group emerged of those centrally engaged in the push for military accountability. Hundreds of interviews were given, some of which were on very prominent platforms. Spaces events were held on X. Op-eds and books were written. Conversations were held with Members of Congress.

Some individuals within the military accountability effort even ran for political office themselves.

All these actions were the result of courageous individuals deciding to stand on principle. They saw a massive problem and decided they were going to confront it.

And they drew inspiration from Rob Green, who had consistently led from the front even at the risk of great cost to himself.

Rob and I haven't always fully agreed on our respective strategic assessments of the situation as it pertains to DoD and military accountability. While we largely agreed on the goals we wanted to achieve, we didn't always see eye-to-eye on the pathway to achieve those goals. A bit of this naturally resulted from our somewhat differing understandings of the strategic environment.

These differing assessments are most evident in the fact that one of us (me) resigned from the military, choosing to fight from outside the military while the other (Rob) opted to fight from within. Our respective strategic approaches have often times been very tightly aligned and at other times have been less so.

That doesn't mean that we had wildly opposing assessments. Our assessments have always been far more aligned than divergent.

But having a difference of opinion on a strategic approach in no way implies a question as to Rob’s courage or sincerity.

Rob has proven time and again that he embodies the values we as Americans should want in our military officers. He has proven it when it most matters. When senior Pentagon officials sided against the Constitution and the country, Rob remained strong. Rather than shrink from adversity, he faced the challenges head on. He placed his faith in God and moved forward.

Those are the kinds of people I most admire. Those, like Rob Green, who do what's right because it's right, regardless of the personal consequences.

And that's why senior military officers have deemed him a threat.

Conclusion

When you come for Rob Green, you come for all of us.

You come for all those who have dared to challenge the tarnished, corrupted authority of the U.S. military and broader U.S. government. You come for all those who have already demonstrated in the furnace of affliction the courage to stare unflinchingly into the face of tyranny and proclaim “I will not comply.” You come for all those who have already expressed through deed the willingness to align with truth, no matter the personal cost.

The reprisals against Rob not only represent a massive moral failing on the part of the military. They also represent a massive strategic error.

How?

In perhaps the most iconic scene of the 1960 movie Spartacus, Roman general and senator Marcus Licinius Crassus receives an unwelcome shock when he offers to spare the defeated slave army from crucifixion on the condition that they identify their leader, Spartacus.

Upon hearing the demand, Spartacus resolutely stands to identify himself and give himself up, ensuring the lives of the remaining slaves will be spared though he will surely be crucified.

As he stands, however, his friend Antoninus also stands and loudly shouts, “I'm Spartacus!” Immediately, other slaves also stand and from across the entire field, shouts of “I'm Spartacus” can be heard, making it impossible to identify the true Spartacus. Crassus, the powerful general and senator, realizes that despite his victory on the battlefield, he is at that moment unable to personally vanquish his nemesis.

Though Rob’s identity is of course known to the Navy - after all, he's always challenged them openly in his own name - the application of this lesson still stands.

In the fight against military tyranny, we're all Rob Green now.