Several Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday they are under federal investigation over a video they released on social media in November in which they reminded U.S. troops they can disobey illegal orders, a message that angered President Donald Trump.
In a video message Wednesday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) said that Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C., last week asked to interview her about the video. Slotkin added that she also received an inquiry from the FBI’s counterterrorism division late last year and that she believed both were examples of Trump using his political appointees to pressure opponents into silence.
“It’s legal intimidation and physical intimidation meant to get you to shut up,” Slotkin said in her message, which she posted on social media. “He’s used it with our universities, our corporations, our legal community, and with politicians who falsely believe that doing his bidding and staying quiet will keep them safe. No. I’m not going to do that.”
Three of the other five Democrats who participated in the video — Reps. Jason Crow (Colorado), Maggie Goodlander (New Hampshire) and Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania) — also received inquiries from Pirro’s office, according to representatives for the lawmakers.
“Donald Trump called for my arrest, prosecution, and execution — all because I said something he didn’t like. Now he’s pressuring his political appointees to harass me for daring to speak up and hold him accountable,” Crow said in a statement. “I won’t be intimidated and will keep fighting to uphold my oath to the Constitution and defend our country.”
Representatives for Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny the existence of either investigation Wednesday.
Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, organized the video in question late last year, in which six Democrats with military or civil service backgrounds warned that threats to the country were coming not just from abroad but also domestically. They did not name Trump but, citing the Uniform Code of Military Justice, said that members of the U.S. military and the intelligence community have a responsibility to refuse illegal orders.
In addition to Slotkin, the video included messages from Reps. Chris Deluzio (Pennsylvania), a former Navy officer; Crow, a former Army Ranger; Goodlander, a Navy veteran; Houlahan, a former Air Force officer; and Sen. Mark Kelly (Arizona), a former Navy captain and astronaut. Representatives for Kelly and Deluzio did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump responded by calling the lawmakers “traitors” and claiming on social media that they should be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL.” He added that their behavior was “punishable by DEATH!” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later clarified that Trump did not want to execute them but accused them of “essentially encouraging” chaos.
“It is sad and telling that simply stating a bedrock principle of American law caused the President of the United States to threaten violence against me, and it is downright dangerous that the Justice Department is targeting me for doing my job,” Goodlander said in a statement Wednesday.
Houlahan called the investigation “ridiculous” in a statement.
“We will not be silenced,” she added.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
In her video message Wednesday, Slotkin said threats against her “went through the roof” following Trump’s social media posts about the lawmakers’ video, prompting her to add round-the-clock security. She received a bomb threat at her home, her parents were “swatted” in the middle of the night, and her siblings needed police cars in their driveways, she added.
Slotkin said the inquiry from Pirro, a longtime Trump ally, was another way Trump was trying to threaten her.
“To be clear, this is the president’s playbook. Truth doesn’t matter, facts don’t matter, and anyone who disagrees with him becomes an enemy and he then weaponizes the federal government against them,” she said.
The reported inquiries from Pirro’s office are not the only examples of repercussions from Trump allies stemming from the video. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he had formally censured Kelly and would seek to reduce his Navy rank in retirement, accusing the senator of making “seditious statements.”
In response, Kelly filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, arguing that he was being unlawfully punished and emphasizing that he had earned his military rank.
“Pete Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military, just because he or another secretary of defense doesn’t like what they’ve said,” Kelly said Monday. “That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I’m not going to stand for it.”
Dan Lamothe and Tara Copp contributed to this report.
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