Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan says she has learned that federal prosecutors are investigating her after she took part in a video urging military service members to resist illegal orders.
Ms. Slotkin, a Democrat, said in an interview on Monday that she found out about the inquiry from the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a longtime ally of President Trump’s. In an email sent to the Senate’s sergeant-at-arms, Ms. Pirro’s office requested an interview with the senator or her private counsel.
A spokesman for Ms. Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny any investigation, and it is unclear exactly what officials have identified as a possible crime related to the video.
Ms. Slotkin organized the video, which Mr. Trump and other administration officials have described as “seditious,” along with five other Democratic lawmakers who are also military veterans. Its message that military officers are obligated to ignore illegal orders is a fundamental principle of military law.
The investigation by Ms. Pirro’s office is the latest escalation in a campaign by Mr. Trump and his allies to exact retribution on those he views as enemies seeking to undermine his administration or his authority as commander in chief.
In November, Ms. Pirro opened a criminal investigation into Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, over whether Mr. Powell lied to Congress about the scope of the central bank’s renovation of its Washington headquarters.
Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military had started administrative actions against Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona and a retired Navy captain, who also participated in the video. The proceedings could result in a reduction in his rank and military pension.
Ms. Slotkin, a former C.I.A. officer who served three tours in Iraq, described the investigation as an effort by an authoritarian president to weaponize the federal government and intimidate her into silence. “Facts matter little, but the threat matters quite a bit,” she said. “The threat of legal action; the threat to your family; the threat to your staff; the threat to you.”
Ms. Slotkin’s journey over the last year highlights fundamental questions for moderate Democrats from swing states like Michigan: Should they prioritize economic issues, like lowering inflation, that they know are most central to their constituents’ everyday lives? Or has American democracy reached a crisis point that requires them to sound the alarm? Can they do both?
“I’ve seen democracies flicker out,” Ms. Slotkin said in March when she delivered her party’s response to Mr. Trump’s State of the Union address. “I’ve seen what life is like when a government is rigged.”
“You can’t criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock at the door in the middle of the night,” she added
In the months that followed, Ms. Slotkin’s warnings about the state of American democracy have grown more dire and her worries that Mr. Trump will use the legal system or the military to target Americans who disagree with him have become more pronounced.
In June, as Mr. Trump was deploying Marines and National Guard forces to Los Angeles over the objection of state and local leaders, Ms. Slotkin asked Mr. Hegseth during a Senate hearing whether he had given the troops orders “to shoot at unarmed protesters in any way.”
Mr. Hegseth laughed and dismissed her question.
After the assassination of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk in September, Mr. Trump and his top advisers said they were going to designate certain left-wing groups as “domestic terrorists.”
“As a former C.I.A. officer, that pricked my ears up,” Ms. Slotkin said.
Ms. Slotkin, speaking at the Brookings Institution in the fall, suggested that Mr. Trump could use lethal force against his domestic enemies or target them with criminal investigations.
“I’m giving this speech today because I believe that’s exactly the plan,” she said. “I believe that Trump is ready to bring the full weight of the federal government against Americans he perceives as enemies. Why? Because he has one goal: making sure that he and his ilk never have to give up power.”
Those concerns led a few weeks later to the video she made with her fellow lawmakers urging U.S. troops to remember their oath to the Constitution and resist illegal orders. The message echoed her earlier speech.
This time, though, Mr. Trump reacted with vitriol and suggested that their actions were a betrayal of the country. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” he wrote.
Ms. Slotkin said her office was inundated with hundreds of threats and that the Capitol Police told her that she required 24-hour security. The police were called to her father’s home in Michigan in a practice known as “swatting” after a caller falsely asserted that he was trying to kill his wife.
“My brother had to have a police car put in front of his home,” Ms. Slotkin said.
Mr. Kelly sued Mr. Hegseth and the Pentagon this week over the move to punish him for the video. “I didn’t expect that I would ever find myself here,” he said in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday.
In the interview on Monday, Ms. Slotkin shared a similar sentiment. “I’ve studied this kind of political authoritarianism in other countries my entire professional life,” she said. “I just can’t believe I am talking about it in my own country.”
She grew more concerned this week after the fatal shooting of Renee Good, an unarmed American citizen, by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis.
Vice President JD Vance said Ms. Good had interfered with law enforcement operations and called her actions “classic terrorism.”
Ms. Slotkin said the administration’s reaction reflected its growing authoritarian impulses.
“Anyone who’s an enemy is a terrorist,” she said. Such language, she continued, is the “standard playbook of any authoritarian leader.”
Today, she said, the primary divide in the Democratic Party is no longer between moderates like herself and progressives. Rather, she said, it is between Democrats who want to fight and those who believe they can wait out Mr. Trump and his movement.
“I realized it’s not just about me and my family,” she said. “It’s what happens when the commander in chief takes the arms of the government and turns them against basic free speech and against his own people. And it’s not going to stop with me.”
Devlin Barrett contributed reporting.
Greg Jaffe covers the Pentagon and the U.S. military for The Times.
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