Mark Kelly speaks out after grand jury declines to indict six lawmakers over video urging troops to resist illegal orders
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”.
