The office of District of Columbia Attorney Jeanine Pirro is reportedly halting actions against a number of Democrats who appeared in a video urging military personnel to defy orders.
According to “three individuals familiar with the situation,” NBC News indicated that Pirro’s office has “decided to stop pursuing the case” against Senators Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), as well as Representatives Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Chrissy Hoolahan (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Jason Crow (D-CO).
This decision followed a “federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., unanimously rejecting Pirro’s efforts,” suggesting that the lawmakers had acted within lawful bounds by participating in videos encouraging military personnel to resist unlawful orders.
It was reported by NBC News that the federal grand jury, acting about two weeks prior, fundamentally disagreed with Pirro’s attempts to indict the lawmakers over the video, signaling that they felt the government failed to meet even the minimal requirement of probable cause needed for an indictment.
While this case against the six members is now considered closed in Washington, it does not automatically rule out the possibility of federal prosecutors pursuing the case elsewhere; however, there has been no public signal indicating such intentions.
In November, Breitbart News mentioned that President Donald Trump had reacted to the video by labeling the lawmakers “traitors” who “should be in jail.”
“Those traitors who told the military to disregard my orders ought to be in jail, not on misleading news channels trying to justify that their comments were acceptable. That’s not how it works, and it never will,” Trump stated in a Truth Social post at the time. “What they said cannot be interpreted in any other way!”
In a video from that time, Democratic lawmakers asserted that the Trump administration was trying to turn military personnel and “intelligence professionals” against the American public.
“Our laws are explicit. We can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly was heard saying in the video.
“We can also refuse illegal orders,” Slotkin added in the video.
