MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday highlighted President Donald Trump’s latest failure “to silence” his critics after a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., refused a Department of Justice request to indict six Democratic members of Congress.
The “Last Word” host welcomed a triumphant but concerned Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who, alongside five of his peers, urged U.S. service members in a video last year to “refuse illegal orders.” Trump suggested at the time that the move was “seditious” and “punishable by DEATH!”
“This just means follow the law,” Kelly said. “But Donald Trump and people around him don’t like when somebody presents something that he doesn’t agree with. He thinks he should be allowed to do and give whatever order he wants because he’s a wannabe dictator.”
The DOJ sought indictments against Kelly and his colleagues — Sen. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Reps. Chris Deluzio (Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.) and Jason Crow (Colo.) — who had merely echoed the Uniform Code of Military Justice in their video.
Article 92 states service members will be punished if they fail to obey “any lawful” order.
Kelly told O’Donnell that he and his peers “had a little bit of a heads up” about the potential indictments — and that Trump, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro saw jail or prison time for the six Democrats as the “goal.”
Kelly further revealed that he had just pulled up to his home when he first heard the news.
He said, “I was on the phone with my chief of staff when she got the word from our attorney that they tried to do this. But … a couple dozen of U.S. citizens seemed to understand the Constitution much better than anybody in this administration does and refused to indict us.”
O’Donnell noted with seeming pride that “just citizens reporting for jury duty” declined the indictment.
“Yeah, this time,” Kelly replied. “We’ll see if they keep pressing here. They’ve got a reputation. This president doesn’t like to lose, though he seems to have made a habit of it lately, especially as he uses his justice system as a weapon against people that he disagrees with.”
The senator continued, “He started out with hanging us. He wanted us hanged. Then he said executed. Now we’re in the prosecutorial phase of this. I also have a case with the Navy. They’re trying to demote me and take away some of my pension after 25 years.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced plans last month to downgrade Kelly’s retired U.S. Navy captain rank and pension over his supposedly “seditious statements.” Kelly subsequently sued the secretary of defense, noting that Hegseth once agreed with the message in the video.
As he has frequently done in recent weeks, Kelly added a note of unity on Wednesday.
“But like we said in that press conference today, this isn’t about just the two of us,” he said, referring to a press conference he held with Slotkin earlier in the day. “This is about 350 million Americans who this president will go after and try to silence if he doesn’t like what comes out of their mouths — and this is wrong, and it’s un-American.”
He concluded, “So, for that reason, we’re in it to the end.”
