Democrats Furious Over Justice Department Attempt to Indict Them

The Department of Justice tried and failed to indict Democrats in Congress who made a video urging troops not to obey illegal orders. Now the legislators are triumphant, but also furious. 

A federal grand jury on Tuesday refused to indict the members of Congress in the video: Representative Jason Crow, Senator Mark Kelly, Representative Maggie Goodlander, Senator Elissa Slotkin, Representative Chris Deluzio, and Representative Chrissy Houlahan. It’s not clear if all the lawmakers or only some of them were referred to the grand jury, but they’re all pissed.

“Tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law,” Slotkin said in a post on X Tuesday.  

Kelly, a former Navy captain who has also been targeted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, called the attempted indictment an “outrageous abuse of power.”  

“It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to censure me and threaten to demote me, now it appears they tried to have me charged with a crime—all because of something I said that they didn’t like. That’s not the way things work in America,” the Arizona senator said in a statement. 

On X, Deluzio said, “I will not be intimidated for a single second by the Trump Administration or Justice Department lawyers who tried and failed to indict me today.” 

Crow said that Americans “should be appalled by the fact that Donald Trump and his goons at Department of Justice and everywhere else are weaponizing their justice system just to try to silence dissent and to crush political opponents.” 

“Not only should Americans be angry at that—they have chosen the wrong people. If these fuckers think that they’re going to intimidate us and threaten and bully me into silence, and they’re going to go after political opponents and get us to back down, they have another thing coming,” Crow said, adding that the “tide is turning” with Americans “rising up against the corruption and the rank abuse of this administration.” 

In a statement on X, Houlahan said, “This is good news for the Constitution and the free speech protections it guarantees. The grand jury upheld the rule of law—this is a win for all Americans.” 

Goodlander vowed in a statement that “no matter the threats, I will keep doing my job and upholding my oath to our Constitution.” 

President Trump had accused the lawmakers of sedition “punishable by death” simply for exercising their First Amendment rights. Now it seems that he and the DOJ wanted to prosecute them as some kind of petty attempt to prevent criticism of his administration’s disregard for the law. While it failed this time, how much further will Trump go in breaking the law and punishing those who point it out?