The military judge who last week rejected a 2007 confession from accused 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed once wrote that the U.S. military’s “conservative tendencies” were helping fuel a rise in domestic extremism among service members.
Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, an Air Force judge overseeing the military commission in the 9/11 case, ruled that Mohammed’s confession was not given voluntarily and threw it out. He also rejected prosecutors’ request to begin the trial in January 2027, setting a new date of June 2028 instead. The ruling, which was not initially made public, came just days before the 25th anniversary of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The decision has drawn criticism, including from journalist and author Gerald Posner, who called it a “shameful prelude to the 9/11 anniversary.”
Scrutiny of the ruling has revived attention on a 2023 essay Schrama wrote for the national security publication War on the Rocks, titled “Creating a Codified Legal Response to Domestic Extremism in the Ranks.”
What the essay argued
In the piece, Schrama called for a new provision in military law to address what he described as a “rising population of military members engaging in extremist activities.”
“As an active-duty Air Force military judge, I have seen firsthand a rising population of military members engaging in extremist activities.”
He wrote that “there is more than ample evidence that military members are a ripe population for extremist recruitment” and that the “rise of domestic extremism in the military ranks is a threat to national security.” He cited a 2021 Center for Strategic & International Studies study finding that military personnel were responsible for 17.6% of domestic terrorism plots and attacks, and noted that 12% of those charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot had some form of military experience, including active-duty service members.
On the causes, Schrama argued that “military institutions tend to become more conservative and isolated from civilian society” and that “these conservative tendencies are constantly reinforced, and young military members can be easy prey for the extreme right-wing groups that relate through similar conservative ideology.”
He also wrote that “the United States Criminal Code and the Uniform Code of Military Justice do not currently provide the tools to deal with this crisis, as they do not treat domestic extremism as a specific criminal offense,” adding that “codifying domestic extremism as a punitive article under the military code would provide a means for commanders to adequately address the rising tide of domestic extremism.”
As an example, he pointed to a 2019 case in which a Coast Guard officer, identified in the essay as Hasson, pleaded guilty to gun and drug charges after prosecutors said he had stashed weapons and planned to murder Democratic politicians, Supreme Court justices and TV journalists. Schrama wrote that “despite describing Hasson as a domestic terrorist, federal prosecutors chose these more minor charges due to the fact that no domestic terrorism statute currently exists.”
Schrama’s background
Before taking on the 9/11 case, Schrama served as an Air Force trial judge at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, and has also worked as a staff judge advocate and defense counsel. In 2019, he was deployed as a staff judge advocate to Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Between June 2017 and January 2019, he specialized in environmental law. He became the fifth judge assigned to preside over the 9/11 case in 2025.
Mohammed’s case, along with those of three co-defendants — Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak bin ‘Atash, Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi and Ali Abdul Aziz Ali — has been stuck in pretrial proceedings for years.
Reaction
Ronald Flesvig, a spokesperson for the Military Commissions Convening Authority, declined to comment on Schrama’s ruling, saying it would be inappropriate to discuss a military judge’s decision. He also declined to comment on the 2023 essay, saying it was published “not in his capacity as a judge for the military commissions.”
White House senior advisor Stephen Mueller told Fox News that “our judicial system is so badly broken it sides at every turn with predators, monsters and, in this case, a 9/11 mastermind,” adding that the system “enables the persecution of innocent Americans who did nothing wrong, while protecting cartel killers and foreign terrorists.”
“It’s a disgrace, it’s a travesty, it’s an outrage.”
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