Several Democratic members of the House of Representatives have filed official complaints with the U.S. Capitol Police Department after President Donald Trump endorsed a call to have them hanged.
Politico reported Friday that Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chris DeLuzio (D-Pa.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) contacted Capitol Police to file reports about the threat, which Trump issued after they appeared in a video encouraging military service members to defy illegal orders. The video also featured Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), along with Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin. (D-Mich.)
Following the video’s release, Trump posted to his Truth Social account that their comments should be seen as “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by death!” He also reposted a supporter’s comment calling for the six Democrats to be hanged.
“Each one of these traitors to our Country should be Arrested and put on trial,” Trump wrote. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example must be set.”
Houlahan’s office told Politico that the congresswoman treated Trump’s threat no different than “all threats targeting Representative Houlahan” and reported it to police. Two of her district offices received bomb threats following Trump’s post, and her office was reportedly barraged with “thousands” of angry phone calls and email messages.
“If that’s not a threat to violence I don’t know what is,” Houlahan told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent. “Even if he for whatever reason didn’t mean it or doesn’t act on it, he’s just unleashed a lot of people who are not necessarily well on me and my team and my family, and that’s also a crime.”
The six Democrats noted in their video that they were all veterans of either the U.S. military or intelligence agencies. And their call to disobey illegal orders comes from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That document stipulates that members of the military are duty-bound to obey “any lawful general order or regulation” lest they be subjected to a court-martial, but the provision of the UCMJ pertaining to the court-martial process stipulates that the duty to obey orders “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”
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