Active-duty Navy JAG officer in hot water after threatening ICE, ripping Hegseth

An active-duty JAG officer may have attained the “find out” stage after social media posts not only degraded the Defense secretary but also appeared to threaten federal law enforcement.

Attempts to hide behind anonymity seemingly failed in a spectacular way Tuesday, only days after tough talk on X crossed into the territory of threats. Amid the protests in Los Angeles, an account promised to “hunt down” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, prompting keyboard sleuths to uncover that the man behind the account was allegedly U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General (JAG) Officer Benjamin France.

Highlighted in a thread from Sam Shoemate, retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 and intelligence officer, “Benny” posted Saturday on X, “And we will hunt down every J6 and ICE agent again.”

Meet Benjamin France, aka “Benny.”

Benny made a comment threatening to “hunt down every J6 and ICE agent” three days ago on X.

Why should we care that Benny is threatening federal agents? Because Benny is an active duty Navy JAG Officer. 1/6 pic.twitter.com/0tqkv5hmf4

— Shoe (@samosaur) June 10, 2025

What followed was the curtain being pulled back on the wizard as Shoemate shared details pulled from France’s since-deleted social media accounts, like his oath joining the JAG Corps and his career history that included time with the Library of Congress and as a law clerk for the House of Representatives House Administration Committee.

Also featured were comments about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made this year. In February, Benny posted that Hegseth and Defense Department Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson “are a joke to the DoD. An O-4 guardsman should never be in charge of all American forces. An embarrassment to the military and the nation.”

At the end of May, the account wrote, “Can’t wait for your a** to eventually be fired when Hegseth eventually drinks himself into a coma. You worthless piece of shit.”

Normally I wouldn’t care about comments like this, but since Benny decided to threaten federal agents, I’ll post his comments directed at @SecDef as an added bonus. 5/6 pic.twitter.com/8UGUOQ5qKy

— Shoe (@samosaur) June 10, 2025

According to Shoemate, who also shared a back-and-forth between Benny and the account Oilfield Rando described as “a scuffle with the wrong one” that demonstrated anonymity had been a bust, “Benny’s chain of command has been notified.”

“However, in case you’d like to follow up, this should help,” he added, providing details of France’s law license and the contact information for the JAG Corps in San Diego, California. “This kind of threatening behavior towards agents, who are already under fire, simply cannot be allowed, especially from an officer whose job is to provide legal advice to his command and holds sway over policy that affects potentially thousands of sailors.”

Benny’s chain of command has been notified. However, in case you’d like to follow up, this should help.

This kind of threatening behavior towards agents, who are already under fire, simply cannot be allowed, especially from an officer whose job is to provide legal advice to his… pic.twitter.com/lMk37iCEba

— Shoe (@samosaur) June 10, 2025

As an exclamation point for the thread, Shoemate added another post of Benny’s from March when corporate media was pushing “Signal-gate” as the account had responded to Ron Filipkowski who said, “The fact that a reporter was inadvertently given access to this in real time shows that Pete Hegesth & the rest of this crew are bumbling incompetents who are going to get a lot of intelligence officials and others killed at some point.”

To that, Benny said to Hegseth, “Think you might need a JAG to defend your dumba**. Oh, wait, you fired all the head JAGs. F*cking dipsh*t.”

.@SecDef maybe you were on to something by firing those JAGs… pic.twitter.com/0R1MKsvK2h

— Shoe (@samosaur) June 10, 2025