After Donald Trump’s reelection last year, a retired Army general who’d been critical of the president in the past made a list of the ways that the incoming administration could come after him, should he speak out again.
He identified three scenarios: a civil suit, an IRS audit, or a recall to active duty where, conceivably, he could face criminal charges in the military’s justice system.
The retired general, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, recalled that exercise after Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said Monday that the Pentagon will investigate Mark Kelly, a Democratic senator from Arizona and retired Navy officer, for his role in making a controversial video reminding service members of their duty to disobey unlawful orders.
Trump’s “retribution campaign,” the retired general said, has had a significant “chilling effect.”
In targeting Kelly and another prominent Democratic critic of the administration, Rep. Eugene Vindman of Virginia, the Defense Department under Hegseth has been co-opted into the president’s norm-shattering bid to exploit what are supposed to be the nonpartisan tools of government to crush political foes.
The Trump administration has sought to punish its enemies through mortgage fraud investigations overseen by the Federal Housing Finance Agency and through criminal probes that Trump personally demanded the attorney general pursue.
Enlisting the Pentagon in this effort poses a unique threat to American democracy, according to historians, retired military officers and legal experts. Long-standing taboos against using the armed forces to further a president’s political machinations have helped ensure that service members obey their civilian leaders — and prevent this powerful institution from being used to suppress Americans’ constitutional rights. Discarding that standard, experts say, risks setting a harmful precedent.
“The best way to stop a politicization death spiral,” said Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, “is to never start it.”
We want to speak directly to members of the Military and the Intelligence Community. The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship. pic.twitter.com/N8lW0EpQ7r
— Sen. Elissa Slotkin (@SenatorSlotkin) November 18, 2025
The video at the center of this controversy was made by six Democratic lawmakers who served either in the military or the intelligence community. Their message — “You can refuse illegal orders” — is enshrined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice as a means to guard against political abuse of the armed forces. It appeared directed at current personnel involved in the Trump administration’s deployment of troops into American cities and its deadly campaign against alleged drug smugglers in the waters off Latin America, which many members of Congress and legal experts say is a blatant violation of the laws of armed conflict.
The FBI has also gotten involved.
In response to questions for this report, the Pentagon referred to Hegseth’s recent social media posts, in which he called the video a “politically-motivated influence operation” and said the military “does not need political actors injecting doubt into an already clear chain of command.”
The Navy secretary’s office, which is under orders to brief Hegseth by Dec. 10 on its findings in the Kelly investigation, did not respond to a request for comment.
Kelly’s office called Hegseth’s inquiry an attempt to intimidate the senator.
Both Hegseth and Trump have labeled the video message “seditious,” comments that multiple retired military lawyers said probably violated the lawmakers’ due process and could undercut any criminal case the administration may seek to bring against them.
Even among legal experts and retired officers critical of the Trump administration, the video has been controversial. Some have argued it was unclear who specifically the message was directed at and risked confusing personnel conducting high-pressure missions.
But no one who spoke for this report thought the content was illegal. Richard Kohn, the Air Force’s former chief historian, called the case involving Kelly “open-and-shut,” noting the senator “was only stating what was commonly known in the military.”
Hegseth ordered the inquiry into Kelly days after the Pentagon’s top lawyer urged multiple House committees to investigate Vindman, a former Army officer and a National Security Council legal adviser central to Trump’s first impeachment, for allegedly violating foreign influence laws.
Vindman has denied the allegations, and his office declined to comment further for this report.
The congressman has long been a target of Trump’s ire. On Nov. 18, he called for the public release of a transcript detailing a phone call that occurred during Trump’s first term between the president and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — the content of which, Vindman said, would be “shocking.”
The crown prince, according to a determination made by U.S. intelligence, approved the brutal killing in 2018 of Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump has vigorously defended Mohammed nonetheless, a stance Vindman has called “disturbing and counter-factual.”
In his Nov. 19 letter urging the probe of Vindman, Pentagon General Counsel Earl Matthews acknowledged that the Defense Department would face an “awkward situation” if it began investigating the congressman, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee. Efforts to reach Matthews through the Pentagon press office for comment were unsuccessful.
With Kelly, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon seems less concerned by the appearance of a conflict of interest in investigating a Democratic lawmaker responsible for congressional oversight of the military — and who has said that the man who leads it, Hegseth, should resign.
Like the president, Hegseth has shown little regard for boundaries intended to insulate the military from political interference. While addressing the nation’s top brass during an unusual summit in September, the defense secretary urged those in attendance to resign if they disagreed with the administration’s management of the armed forces. At one point he mentioned a group of retired officers by name, men with whom he or Trump have had personal conflicts, labeling them as the sorts of leaders he wants out of the military.
Within the past week, a group of former military lawyers argued in a joint statement that the investigation into Kelly lacked merit and risked politicizing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ, which was established after World War II to protect service members from arbitrary charges.
“What’s being done right now in the dismantling of the rule of law in the military is very dangerous for our country,” said retired Maj. Gen. Steve Lepper, a former Air Force deputy judge advocate general, who signed on to the group’s statement.
Through the UCMJ, Hegseth has immense power over current and many former members of the military. That leaves retired service members vulnerable to potential abuse, including infringement on their First Amendment rights, observers say.
Franklin D. Rosenblatt, who is president of the National Institute of Military Justice, a group that advises service members concerned about the lawfulness of their orders, said that “a lot of military people are keeping their heads down.”
For the retired Army general concerned that he too would face the administration’s wrath for airing his views of Trump and Hegseth, the case against Kelly seems hypocritical, he said.
He noted how Trump’s first national security adviser, the retired three-star general Michael Flynn, chanted “lock her up” in reference to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Republican National Convention — speech that was overtly political.
The retired Army general, reflecting on Kelly’s predicament and his own, said it appears that the standard has changed. If a member of the Senate — where scrutiny from the party out of power is core to the government’s system of checks and balances — can be targeted by the defense secretary for doing his job, then no one out of uniform is safe speaking out, he said.
“I have concerns,” the general said, “for just about anybody who would say anything.”
Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.
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