WASHINGTON — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is pushing to revive his effort to punish Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) for partaking in a video with other Democratic veteran lawmakers urging service members to “refuse illegal orders.”
Kelly, a retired Navy Captain, sued last month to block Hegseth from sending him a censure letter and moving to dock his military retirement pay over the video. Earlier this month, a US district judge issued a preliminary injunction on the penalty.
Now Hegseth is appealing that preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in an attempt to carry out the penalty.
“These guys don’t know when to quit,” Kelly fired back on X. “A federal judge told Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth that they violated my constitutional rights and chilled the free speech of millions of retired veterans.”
“There is only one reason to appeal that ruling: to keep trampling on the free speech rights of retired veterans and silence dissent,” the Arizona senator went on. “I went to war to defend Americans’ constitutional rights and I won’t back down from this fight, no matter how far they want to take it.”
Kelly was joined in the controversial video last year by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Reps. Jason Crow (D-Col.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.)
The other five weren’t in Hegseth’s purview for such a punishment, given that Slotkin served in the CIA and that the other four were not retired like Kelly.
Their vague video last year ominously claimed that President Trump was “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”
None of the six specified what kind of “illegal orders” they expected service members to receive.
Hegseth declared that “conduct was seditious in nature,” and Trump described it on Truth Social as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”
Most of the pols involved in the saga shared the House chamber together Tuesday evening for President Trump’s State of the Union address, including Hegseth, Kelly and Slotkin.
Kelly had served for 25 years and became a NASA astronaut. He has drawn 2028 presidential murmurs.
The Trump administration unsuccessfully attempted to indict the six Democratic veterans over the video, but failed to win over a grand jury.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, who issued the preliminary injunction, concluded that Kelly will “likely succeed” on the merits of his lawsuit.
