Does a viral video show two military pilots arrested for refusing to fly armed planes to Israel? No, that's not true: A video with a false caption has gone viral more than two weeks after it was filmed. The chaotic scene was filmed on Sept. 3, 2025 when a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing was disrupted with shouts from the gallery. The protestors, former intelligence officer Captain Josephine Guilbeau and former U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret, Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar (Ret.), were removed from the chamber and arrested in the hall. They are not active duty pilots.
One example of the miscaptioned video (archived here) was published on TikTok on Sept. 18, 2025 by @kunta.kinte448. The post contained these hashtags:
Trump is still supplying Weapons to Israeli to boom 💥💥 Palestine
#freepalestine🇵🇸❤️
#irelandtiktok
#amerikatiktok
#spaintiktok🇪🇸
#denmatktiktok🇩🇰
The false text caption on the video reads:
Military pilots refused to fly armed planes to Israel. They were later summoned to the Pentagon, forcibly arrested, and placed in military prisons.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot of tiktok.com/@kunta.kinte448/video/7551564429960269078.)
This video is real, but the caption misrepresents what is going on. The hearing took place in the 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building -- not the Pentagon. The purpose of the hearing was to consider five of President Trump's nominees for State Department roles. The two people who were removed from the hearing and arrested in the hall were not military pilots although they are both veterans.
Forbes posted a video of the full hearing on YouTube on Sept. 3, 2025, titled, "James Risch Leads Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing To Consider Key Trump Nominees". At the start of the video, at 2 minutes, 34 seconds, Risch makes a point of explaining the consequences for interruptions:
Before we start, as a matter of course, we, we run a tight ship here ... we have zero tolerance for protests or anybody who tries to communicate with either the committee or any of the people who are testifying here. I started the policy since I started that if you interrupt you'll be arrested immediately and taken and booked and those usual things. Unfortunately, we've only had to do that a couple times, I guess. That slowed it down considerably and we continue, we will continue to do that. In addition to that, you'll be barred from the committee for a year. So, we welcome the public here.
At 25 minutes, 15 seconds, as Ms. Melinda Hildebrand of Texas, the nominee to be Ambassador to the Republic of Costa Rica was introducing herself, some shouts can be heard intermittently off-camera. The disruption is not filmed, but at 26 minutes, 15 seconds the noise is acknowledged and a short break is called because of the "racket in the hall."
The two veterans who were arrested have been outspoken in the past. On July 25, 2025 The BBC published a video interview (archived here) with Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar (Ret.) who, starting in mid-May 2025, worked as a security contractor with UG Solutions, helping The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribute aid. On Aug. 1, 2025 PBS News Hour (archived here) published an article with a video outlining what Aguilar witnessed at the aid stations, including what he described as the sound of a UG Solutions contractor shooting at a crowd of exiting civilians -- killing at least one man.
Josephine Guilbeau is described as a former U.S. Army All-Source intelligence analyst on her bio page at the Eisenhower Media Network. Guilbeau's Instagram account contains videos of herself speaking at the podium at pro-Palestine and peace protests. On Sept. 4, 2025 she posted a video of herself skipping through a parking lot and taking a bow. The post is captioned:
The proper way to exit jail after being arrested calling out United States Government for being complicit in Genocide.
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by The Quint.
