President Donald Trump just lobbed death threats at a group of Democratic military veteran lawmakers for reminding the troops they are required to refuse illegal orders — but then a series of courts hit him in the face with precisely the reason that reminder was necessary, former Trump administration Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor wrote for his “Defiance” Substack on Friday.
The Democrats in question, which include Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), put out a video this week, stating that the Uniform Code of Military Justice requires illegal orders — like an order to shoot unarmed civilians — to be disobeyed. Trump hit back on Truth Social by first demanding they be arrested, then writing, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” then retweeting another user who said George Washington would have hanged them all.
Despite this, wrote Taylor, “Rather than unify in repudiating the vile remarks from the president, Republicans immediately echoed Trump, daring Democrats to ‘name one’ illegal order anyone in Trump’s government had been asked to carry out. Some similarly accused Democrats of ‘sedition,’ despite the lawmakers merely telling government workers to comply with the law.”
This was a big mistake, he continued, because “within 48 hours, a flurry of receipts arrived.”
On Thursday, Taylor noted, a federal judge ruled Trump’s orders deploying the National Guard to take over law enforcement in Washington, D.C., “exceeded the bounds of statutory authority,” which came shortly after other court rulings striking down deployments in Memphis, Portland, and Chicago. “This is now the second court in one week finding Trump’s domestic troop deployments illegal.”
But that’s not all, he said, because at the same time, a new report revealed Trump’s Justice Department overruled a military lawyer who warned lethal strikes on ships in the Caribbean suspected to be carrying drug traffickers were illegal “extrajudicial killings.” And a grand jury is investigating whether the DOJ’s criminal investigations into Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James involved people illegally impersonating mortgage investigators.
While all this is going on, Taylor added, yet another federal judge escalated a contempt probe into illegal deportation flights, and analysts at Just Security published findings that Trump officials have ignored 26 court orders so far this year.
“In other words, the lawmakers were right,” wrote Taylor. “The Trump administration is putting federal employees in an impossible position. They’re asking them to do things that the courts are easily finding to be ‘illegal’ and ‘unconstitutional,’ and then they’re threatening those employees not to come forward.”
Those Democratic lawmakers, he concluded, “were not criminals. What they did was not sedition. It was not treason. It was American. And the past 48 hours prove they were absolutely correct.”
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