In November, after several Democratic military and intelligence veterans urged service members to reject illegal orders, the White House began a furious pushback campaign that was extreme even by contemporary standards. Donald Trump helped lead the charge, insisting that the Democratic lawmakers, who’d done nothing wrong, had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
Around the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a crusade against one of them, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, who was in a unique position: The decorated Navy veteran retired as a captain and was the only member of the group who had served long enough to receive a military pension.
If the Republican administration was going to target the other Democratic members, it needed to rely on an increasingly weaponized Justice Department.
A few weeks ago, that’s exactly what happened: Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA officer who served three tours in Iraq, announced that federal prosecutors had begun investigating her for having told service members not to obey illegal orders. Other veteran lawmakers who appeared in the same video confirmed that they, too, were facing DOJ scrutiny.
This week, the targets of this misguided inquiry started telling Trump’s Justice Department what it doesn’t like to hear: “No.” The Associated Press reported:
Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is refusing to voluntarily comply with a Justice Department investigation into a video she organized urging U.S. military members to resist ‘illegal orders’ — escalating a dispute that President Donald Trump has publicly pushed.
In letters first obtained by The Associated Press, Slotkin’s lawyer informed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro that the senator would not agree to a voluntary interview about the video.
The Michigan Democrat isn’t alone: The New York Times reported that three House Democrats — Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania — said they’d also rejected overtures from Pirro, the former Fox News host who’s now serving as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
In theory, as the AP’s report noted, the Democrats’ refusal to cooperate with this absurd endeavor shifts the burden onto the Justice Department, which now has to decide “whether it will escalate an investigation into sitting members of Congress or retreat from an inquiry now being openly challenged.”
That choice should be relatively easy, since there’s literally no evidence that any of the Democratic veterans did anything wrong — it is not illegal to remind service members not to commit crimes — but given the state of federal law enforcement, it’s unclear whether that will matter.
The latest developments did offer one notable twist: Slotkin’s legal team also requested that Pirro preserve all documents related to the matter for “anticipated litigation.”
In other words, the Democratic senator isn’t just refusing to play along with a baseless investigation, she’s also considering picking a legal fight of her own. Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
