Arizona senator Mark Kelly warned that the Trump administration’s failed attempt to secure an indictment against him and five other Democratic lawmakers for a video urging service members to resist unlawful orders was a “master alarm flashing for our democracy”.
On Tuesday, a grand jury in Washington DC declined to indict the six members of Congress who posted a video last year reminding members of the military and intelligence community that they “can refuse illegal orders” – a message that Donald Trump said amounted to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
“This is not a good news story,” Kelly, a retired Navy captain, said on Wednesday, during a press conference on Capitol Hill. “This is a story about how Donald Trump and his cronies are trying to break our system in order to silence anyone who lawfully speaks out against them.”
Kelly, joined by Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who organized the video, decried Trump’s “weaponization” of the justice department as “straight from the authoritarian playbook”.
The federal prosecutors sought to bring charges against Kelly, Slotkin and their four House colleagues: Jason Crow of Colorado, a former army Ranger; Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, a former navy reservist; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, a former air force officer; and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, a navy veteran.
The senators said the outcome was a resounding rebuke of the attempt by the US attorney’s office in Washington – led by Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s longtime ally and former Fox News host – to criminalize their dissent.
“It’s just a sad moment when anonymous grand jurors, just citizens called at random in Washington DC, have more bravery to uphold basic rule of law and stand for that than some of our colleagues here in the Senate,” Slotkin said.
In November, the six lawmakers posted a 90-second video online in which they each took turns reading a statement warning active-duty service-members that “the threats to our constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”
They do not mention a specific order or action, but the video was published amid the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and as the president was weighing whether to deploy active-duty military troops to American cities, as he had done in Los Angeles over the summer.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, formally censured Kelly, a retired Nasa astronaut and decorated navy captain, over the incident and attempted to reduce his rank and pension. Kelly filed a lawsuit against Hegseth last month arguing the video he and other Democrats made was protected free speech, and that the secretary had undertaken an “unconstitutional crusade” against him.
The Department of Justice had recently requested to interview Slotkin, the senator said last month. In a letter addressed to Bondi and Pirro, Slotkin said she would not comply with their inquiries and asked them to retain all of their records in the event she decides to sue.
“Being quiet doesn’t actually make you safe,” Slotkin said. “Going on offense seems to be the only way to get their attention, so I certainly reserve that right of keeping all those options open.”
It was previously considered exceedingly rare for a grand jury to decline to bring an indictment. But rejections have been happening with growing frequency in Trump’s second term, as his appointees prioritize politically-charged cases against the president’s political enemies, among them the former FBI director James Comey and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.
Federal grand juries returned indictments against James and Comey last fall, but a judge later dismissed both cases after finding the prosecutor who brought them had been improperly appointed. Efforts to reindict James were unsuccessful.
Speaking on Wednesday, the senators warned that the administration’s efforts to prosecute them was part of a much broader campaign to chill free speech for all Americans.
“We did not ask for this. We’re just the first through the breach. But you’ll be damn sure that we are not going to back down,” Kelly said. “The most patriotic thing that any American can do right now is to continue exercising our rights, continue speaking truth to power and not backing down.”
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Dani Anguiano contributed to this story
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
