By Hannah Rabinowitz, Evan Perez, Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — A federal grand jury on Tuesday declined to indict Democratic lawmakers who posted a video urging service members and intelligence officials to disobey any illegal orders from the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department’s case focused on a 90-second video clip that featured six democrats, including Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly. The video, which outraged the Trump administration, had warned that “threats to our Constitution” are coming “from right here at home,” and repeatedly urged the military and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”
The declination is a rebuke of the administration’s efforts to paint the six lawmakers — all of whom served in either the military or intelligence services — as dangerously undermining the president’s authority as commander in chief. It was not immediately clear which of the lawmakers were facing indictments. CNN has asked the Justice Department for comment.
And while the indictment was rejected by the grand jury, it is also an extraordinary escalation of the Justice Department’s willingness to prosecute who speak about against the president and his administration’s actions.
The video, posted in November, was met with immediate backlash from the Trump administration, including from the president himself who accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH.”
Within weeks, Slotkin and Kelly, along with Reps. Chrissy Houlahan, Chris Deluzio, Jason Crow and Maggie Goodlander, said they had been contacted by federal prosecutors as part of an investigation into their actions.
Kelly’s participation in the video has also drawn scrutiny from the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is working to punish the senator over it by reducing his last military rank, which would lower the pay he receives as a retired Navy captain, and issuing a letter of censure.
But those plans could be upended as soon as this week. A federal judge in Washington has promised to rule by Wednesday on Kelly’s bid to undo Hegseth’s plans. The judge has previously appeared skeptical that the secretary’s actions were constitutional, saying at a hearing last week that he thought Hegseth was trampling on Kelly’s First Amendment rights by retaliating against him for his participation in the video.
“This is an outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies,” Kelly said in a statement Tuesday. “It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime — all because of something I said that they didn’t like. That’s not the way things work in America. “
Slotkin decried the Trump administration for its continued efforts to “weaponize our justice system against his perceived enemies,” saying that the case was brought “at the direction of President Trump, who said repeatedly that I should be investigated, arrested, and hanged for sedition.”
The-CNN-Wire
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