Congratulations to a group of anonymous American citizens (federal grand jurors) who live in Washington, D.C. for rejecting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s reckless and dangerous effort to target six Democratic members of Congress for criminal prosecution.
The supposed crime of Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan? Producing a short video reminding active-duty troops that they had a right and responsibility to disregard illegal orders.
This no true bill by the D.C. grand jury is being described as an act of resistance or a rebuke to Donald Trump or similar language, but let’s step back here and actually look at the facts. What really happened here is that the Trump administration leaned on its weaponized Justice Department and Pirro to intimidate a series of lawmakers for having reminded our armed forces of black-letter law.
To consider this a transgression worthy of prosecution, you would need to consider the idea of troops following the law itself a sinister or even criminal act.
What the grand jury has done here is not a political move, or at least not any more political than the simple act of trying to uphold our rule of law has become. Grand juries, which go back to the Magna Carta, are instructed to evaluate the totality of the evidence to determine whether there is probable cause that a crime was committed, a relatively low bar.
Such a minimal hurdle was nonetheless obviously not met here by Pirro’s prosecutors showing the secret grand jury panel a video of elected officials telling troops to do something that they’re instructed to do as early as basic training. This is a farce, one more embarrassment in a line of them too long to count.
This grand jury joins several others who have bucked the Trump administration’s overreach as it has attempted to toss spurious charges at political opponents ranging from former FBI Director Jim Comey to New York Attorney General Tish James to Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
These regular citizens have done their duty here, setting an example that some of our ostensible leaders would follow. You see that, House Speaker Mike Johnson? It’s possible to unequivocally reject efforts by Trump’s lackeys to make a mockery of our system of government instead of prevaricating and rolling over. Similarly, the parallel Pentagon effort to demote Kelly must also fail.
Let’s also remember that these lawmakers’ reminder did not come from nowhere; it was issued only after troops had already carried out what seemed to be unlawful actions at Trump’s behest. To this day, the armed forces continue to kill people on what administration claims are drug smuggling boats, and to this day neither the White House, the Pentagon, the DOJ nor anyone else has offered any specific legal authority for the military to kill civilians abroad, regardless of whether they are suspected of participating in a criminal enterprise.
It’s easy for Americans to dismiss this as something happening to criminals overseas that we don’t have to care about, but this matters. If we can kill civilians with impunity, can other nations kill American civilians under the same rationale? Can we or other militaries violate other rules of war? And if the armed forces can follow illegal orders overseas, why not here?
Trump has made no bones about his desire to deploy troops on U.S. soil for nakedly political reasons. We commend this grand jury for recognizing that these legislators broke no laws.
