Berliner Tageblatt - US grand jury rejects bid to indict Democrats over illegal orders video

A federal grand jury composed of local citizens in Washington denied the Justice Department's attempts to indict the lawmakers who posted a short video urging conscientious service, sources told the New York Times and the Washington Post.

In the video posted to social media in November, the members of Congress called on the military to "refuse illegal orders."

It featured Arizona's Mark Kelly, Michigan's Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire.

In a statement posted to her Instagram account Tuesday night, Slotkin reiterated that the 90-second video "simply quoted the law," adding: "Hopefully, this ends this politicized investigation for good."

"I will not be intimidated for a single second by the Trump Administration or Justice Department lawyers who tried and failed to indict me today," Deluzio said in his own statement posted to X.

"American citizens on a grand jury refused to go along with this attempt to charge me with a crime for stating the law in a way Trump and his enablers didn't like," he said.

The Post noted that it is "exceedingly rare" for federal prosecutors to strike out in a grand jury proceeding because they "only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed -- a relatively low threshold."

The six Democrats -- all of whom served in the military or the nation's spy agencies -- never specified which orders to refuse, but Trump has leaned heavily on the use of the military in his second term, both domestically and abroad.

The 79-year-old Republican has ordered the National Guard into US cities to back his immigration crackdown, in many cases over the protest of local leaders.

He has also ordered strikes abroad, including attacks in Nigeria, Iran and a series of lethal hits on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and Pacific that have killed at least 130 people, and which experts say are illegal.

After the Democrats' video circulated on social media, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform: "THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW," later calling it "SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL."

In another post, Trump said the behavior was "punishable by DEATH!"

In addition to the Justice Department's attempt to land an indictment, the Pentagon said in November that it was considering a court-martial against Kelly, a former astronaut, in an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration's response.

Later that month, Democratic lawmakers accused Trump of using the FBI to "intimidate" members of Congress and said the law enforcement agency had requested interviews with them following their criticism of the president.

"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," Kelly wrote on X Tuesday, referencing the secretary of defense.

"Donald Trump wants every American to be too scared to speak out against him. The most patriotic thing any of us can do is not back down."

G.Schulte--BTB