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WASHINGTON (CN) — Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin slammed President Donald Trump on Wednesday for targeting them and five Democratic colleagues for criminal prosecution over a video urging military members to reject illegal orders.
On Tuesday, a 20-person federal grand jury at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected prosecutors’ effort to indict the six lawmakers, all former veterans, on unspecified criminal charges.
Kelly, a former Navy pilot and astronaut, said during Wednesday’s press conference that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s criminal probe was “straight from the authoritarian playbook,” a “master alarm flashing for our democracy” and a clear effort to punish Democrats for speaking out against the Trump administration’s military actions.
“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, and to send a signal to every American that they better think twice before they speak out, or they might be next,” the Arizona Democrat said.
“Federal prosecutors went to a grand jury to seek criminal charges against members of the United States Senate for something we said, they tried to have us charged and thrown into jail because we said something that they didn’t like, because we repeated what the law actually is,” Kelly added.
Before Trump’s second term in office, prosecutors obtaining an indictment was a near certainty — to the point that former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals Solomon Wachtler famously said district attorneys could get grand juries to “indict a ham sandwich.”
According to the Justice Department’s latest data from 2016, federal prosecutors closed over 155,000 prosecutions and declined over 25,000 cases brought by investigators, but in only six cases did grand juries refuse to indict.
In November, the veteran Democrats posted a 90-second video warning U.S. service members that the Trump administration was threatening citizens’ trust in the military and was actively violating the Constitution.
“Our laws are clear,” the lawmakers say in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”
Pennsylvania Representative Chrissy Houlahan and Colorado Representative Jason Crow were among the other Democrats who took part in the video.
Trump later blasted the Democrats on Truth Social, calling the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL” and suggested they should be executed as a result.
Michigan Senator Slotkin also lauded the grand jury’s decision, adding that had prosecutors successfully obtained an indictment, she and her colleagues would likely be preparing for their arrests.
“Yesterday, 20 anonymous Americans we will never meet who made up that grand jury told us more about the values of America than Jeanine Pirro or Pam Bondi or certainly this president,” Slotkin said. “Small business owners, a mailman, a teacher, we have no idea who they are, but just like people in Minneapolis, the people on the ground who understand the values of this country are the ones currently upholding it.”
Slotkin added that she was keeping her legal options open, suggesting she would have to “go on offense” as Trump’s intent was to silence her and her colleagues.
“I feel very firmly that the president has created a climate of fear, whether it’s our universities, our media CEOs, and the impact of his tariffs, that everyone is self-censoring themselves because they’re scared of the physical and legal intimidation,” Slotkin said. “If fear if contagious, hopefully so is courage.”
Kelly is actively fighting a demotion effort and censure by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in federal court, arguing in a lawsuit filed on Jan. 12 that the initiation of the “retirement grade determination proceeding” on Jan. 5 was clear First Amendment retaliation.
At a preliminary injunction hearing before Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Feb. 3, the Justice Department argued that the military should be allowed to limit certain speech, even by retired service members, if they “undermine military discipline and obedience” in the view of the military’s top brass.
The George W. Bush appointee seemed skeptical, noting that neither the Supreme Court nor the D.C. Circuit had ever extended military speech limits for active-duty soldiers to retirees. Leon expressed concern that such a holding could prevent veteran lawmakers from doing their jobs as part of a co-equal branch of government.
At the hearing, Leon indicated he was aiming to rule by Wednesday to allow Kelly or the government to appeal before a deadline for Kelly to respond to the Department of the Navy’s retirement grade proceeding and Hegseth’s censure letter.
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