Air Force general to retire after service overturns ruling by COVID review board clearing him of misconduct

Brig. Gen. Christopher Sage has spent the last four years of his Air Force career quietly fighting to clear his name of wrongdoing, get back on the promotion list and stay in the service.

Disciplined for decisions he made as a commander deployed to the Middle East during the coronavirus pandemic — such as reopening gyms and removing barbed wire surrounding quarantine areas — an Air Force board reviewing COVID-related adverse actions determined he faced retaliation for his views. A majority of the board agreed in November he should have the black mark removed from his record and have his fast-approaching forced retirement date extended to be returned to consideration for promotion to major general.

However, an Air Force senior official disagreed and overturned the board’s decision six days later, and Sage will retire at the end of the year. The official, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Richard Anderson, said there was insufficient evidence for the board’s decision.

The Air Force is the final arbiter of the decision, though the defense secretary or president could choose to intervene.

“The board took one and a half to two months to review every shred of evidence,” Sage said in an interview. “It was overturned within a few days.”

Eleven members of Congress and 66 current and former colleagues, commanders and subordinates sent letters of support to Air Force and Defense Department officials with no response, Sage and his attorneys said.

“This is not about me,” Sage said. “Yes, I want to see myself get cleared for my posterity and for my reputation. This is for the hundreds, if not thousands, of airmen that are waiting and watching my case to see whether they are going to submit their case to the Air Force [Board for Correction of Military Records].”

An Air Force spokesperson declined to answer questions about the decision but said in a statement the “Air Force Board for Correction of Military Records request for appeal has been reviewed by all senior leaders within the Department of the Air Force.”

The service also declined to answer the rate at which Air Force officials override a board decision.

Board statistics show the Air Force granted relief to service members making claims unrelated to sexual assault or mental health on average about 29% of the time in 2024. In the first quarter of 2025, relief was granted in 39% of 289 cases evaluated — the most recent data available.

The online charts do not indicate if the review board’s decision was changed during the service’s final sign-off for the decision.

“There seems to be a real lack of transparency,” said Davis Younts, a retired Air Force attorney representing Sage.

In one response from the service, Younts said he was told that if Sage were to be promoted now, there would be no place for him to serve.

“You can still clear his name,” he said. “It’s been over three years. Promote him to two-star to make this right, and he could still retire immediately.”

Younts, who has worked for 10 years on cases before military records boards, said he has never seen a service overturn a board decision to the detriment of the service member. In roughly 200 cases, it’s happened twice and in favor of his client each time.

“It is just extremely troubling,” Younts said. “I have a lot of clients who are considering coming back in and serving, but every time they see something like this, they don’t trust it, and they’re walking away.”

A call for review

When President Donald Trump came into office in January, his administration began reviewing many of the decisions made under President Joe Biden related to the coronavirus pandemic, citing retaliation for certain beliefs some people hold about the virus and vaccine for it.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth opened the door for the roughly 8,000 service members separated for refusing the COVID vaccine to return to service, and he allowed for COVID-related adverse actions and discharge characterizations to be reevaluated by expedited military records boards.

Most of those troops separated for vaccine refusal received an honorable discharge, but more than 4,000 had their service characterized as general (under honorable conditions), the Pentagon said this month. Nearly 900 veterans have had their discharge characterizations upgraded, and more than 3,000 await review.

The Defense Department did not have an estimate on how many troops received COVID-related adverse action but still serve — like Sage.

The Air Force said it has approved 155 requests to upgrade discharges. It will proactively review another 378 cases.

Sage’s adverse-action case was unique to the service because it did not involve vaccine refusal. It’s unclear if any others will present themselves as the board continues to review more cases, according to a service official.

Sage said he submitted his case in response to a May 7 memo that initiated the boards. A service official called him a few months after the memo was released and suggested he submit his paperwork, he said.

Command decisions

The inspector general case against Sage began while he was commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing from July 2021 to 2022. Sage was deployed to a base in the Middle East, and he said that though the pandemic was slowing in the U.S. at that time, it was still raging in the region. However, about 95% of his personnel had been vaccinated.

He began asking a lot of questions about existing policies and made decisions to ease restrictions on the base, such as removing barbed wire that surrounded areas for quarantine and allowing sick personnel to stay in empty quarters for distinguished visitors, according to documents related to the investigation. This gave them access to private, indoor bathrooms.

Sage reopened the gyms and allowed airmen working outdoors to take off medical masks because the temperatures soared above 100 degrees some days. He also removed a testing requirement for troops as they arrived at the base because they were already being tested for COVID when they left the U.S., and it was slowing down the mission. He maintained random, weekly testing.

“I told my commander I was doing this. It was all within my legal authority,” Sage said. “At the time we had the lowest numbers in the Middle East.”

A senior officer reported Sage to the inspector general for a hostile work environment, misuse of government funds and travel and other types of fraud, waste and abuse. The investigating officer did not find credible evidence to those allegations, according to documents reviewed in the case.

However, the investigator relied on the testimony of the same officer and others to evaluate whether Sage’s COVID-related decisions went against a healthy command climate, according to documents about the case.

The investigator in November 2022 reported evidence that these decisions did go against a healthy command climate and that Sage did not trust his subordinates.

By this time, Sage had moved to a new job, and his new commander chose to take no action on the findings, according to case documents.

However, Biden removed Sage’s name from the list for promotion to major general in March 2024.

After five years as a brigadier general, Sage will be forced to retire. This triggered an officer grade review which found he acted honorably in that rank, even during the period in which the inspector general investigated, according to case documents.

The order removing Sage from the promotion list was signed with Biden’s signature by an autopen, Younts said. The device has been used for decades by presidents to sign the hundreds of documents required of them, but Trump has fixated on Biden’s use of it.

Trump began this year to claim Biden’s staff used it to push “radical” policies and has touted the line at political rallies and news conferences. He posted on social media last month that all documents signed with it under Biden are canceled.

The Air Force declined to comment on what impact this could have on Sage or other service-related documents signed this way.

‘Still feel called to serve’

With his retirement just a day away, Sage said he is still hoping for a final reprieve from the defense secretary or president. Both would have the ability to overturn the Air Force’s decision, Younts said. Particularly given the orders that have been released in the last year and discussed by Hegseth during a September meeting with all general and flag officers held at Quantico, Va.

Hegseth referred to a new memo he called the “No More Walking on Eggshells policy,” which called for an end to “weaponized” complaints and discipline for filing a false report against someone, and he restored commander discretion to take risks.

For Sage’s punishment to remain goes directly against this policy, Younts said.

“Without question, his case should be an example of why that memo was necessary,” he said.

For Sage, a fighter pilot who is now assigned as a special assistant to the commander of NATO’s Air Command in Belgium, it’s about the opportunity to continue to serve, should he be given that option. He is a 1994 graduate of the Air Force Academy in Colorado, where he met his wife, Jessica Sage, a fellow academy graduate.

“My wife and my family, we still feel called to serve, if so selected,” he said. “I would welcome that.”