{"id":30498,"date":"2026-02-25T04:30:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=30498"},"modified":"2026-02-25T04:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T09:30:40","slug":"us-government-drops-case-against-democrats-in-illegal-orders-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2026\/02\/25\/us-government-drops-case-against-democrats-in-illegal-orders-video\/","title":{"rendered":"US government drops case against Democrats in ‘illegal orders’ video"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Federal prosecutors in Washington have dropped their case against six Democratic lawmakers who released a video urging military servicemembers to refuse illegal orders.<\/b><\/p>\n

The decision – confirmed by the BBC’s media partner CBS News – follows US Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office failing to secure a grand jury indictment against the six military and intelligence veterans.<\/p>\n

The justice department could still pursue the case in a different district, but there were no signs on Tuesday that it intended to do so. Pirro’s office had no comment.<\/p>\n

After the Democrats released the video, President Donald Trump called the lawmakers “traitors” and suggested the video was an offence “punishable by death”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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He later\u00a0said he was not threatening death for the six<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pirro’s office then moved to investigate the lawmakers while the Pentagon began working to demote Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy captain and astronaut, in order to cut his retirement pay and benefits.<\/p>\n

Kelly had previously called Pirro’s case “an outrageous abuse of power by Donald Trump and his lackies” and has also sued the defence department, which was temporarily blocked by a judge from reducing his rank in early February.<\/p>\n

The justice department had sought to charge him, along with Senator Elissa Slotkin and Representatives Jason Crow, Maddie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, under a law carrying a maximum 10-year prison sentence for those who encourage “insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military”.<\/p>\n

But a grand jury in early February would not sign off on the indictment, and Slotkin’s attorneys warned Pirro’s office that if the case continued she would argue it was a “vindictive and selective prosecution”.<\/p>\n

Grand juries decide if there is enough evidence to bring a case to trial.<\/p>\n

The lawmakers and their supporters had described Trump’s reaction to the video as an attack on free speech and an effort to punish perceived political enemies.<\/p>\n

They also said that they were, in the video, reminding servicemembers of the rules they must follow in the military. Under the Uniform Military Code of Justice, servicemembers have a duty to refuse to obey orders that violate US or international laws.<\/p>\n

They released the 90-second video in November as many in the country questioned American military strikes on alleged narco-trafficking boats off the coast of South America, which have resulted in more than 130 deaths since September.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal prosecutors in Washington have dropped their case against six Democratic lawmakers who released a video urging military servicemembers to refuse illegal orders. The decision – confirmed by the BBC’s media partner CBS News – […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[6712,12258,5032,6135],"class_list":{"0":"post-30498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-democrats","10":"tag-uniform-military-code-of-justice","11":"tag-us-justice-department","12":"tag-washington","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30500,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30498\/revisions\/30500"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}