War Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday announced that he is issuing a letter of censure to Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona over the lawmaker’s participation in a video that called on troops to resist unlawful orders.
Hegseth said that the censure was “a necessary process step” to proceedings that could result in a demotion from Kelly's retired rank of captain in the U.S. Navy.
"This Censure is a necessary process step, and will be placed in Captain Kelly’s official and permanent military personnel file," Hegseth said in a post to X.
In November, Kelly and the other lawmakers — all veterans of the armed services and intelligence community — called on U.S. military members to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders.”
The 90-second video was first posted from Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s X account. In it, the six lawmakers — Slotkin, Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan — speak directly to U.S. service members, whom Slotkin acknowledges are “under enormous stress and pressure right now.”
Nonetheless, Slotking admitted that no illegal orders had been given to military personnel before the video appeared.
Afterward, President Donald Trump accused them of sedition “punishable by DEATH,” reposting messages from others about the video and amplifying it with his own words.
Kelly, along with some of the other Democrats in the initial video, have sent out fundraising messages based off the Republican president’s reaction to their comments, efforts that have gone toward filling their own campaign coffers and further elevating their national-level profiles.
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