“It’s preposterous.”

“Our laws are clear,” Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, said in a video.
“You can refuse illegal orders.”Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Without merit ...

Pentagon Opens Inquiry Into Senator Mark Kelly Over What Hegseth Calls ‘Seditious’ Video

The defense secretary called the senator’s remarks urging troops not to follow illegal orders
“despicable, reckless, and false.”

The highly unusual announcement is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to seek retribution against President Trump’s perceived political enemies.

Instead of employing the Justice Department as his means for punishment, this time the Trump administration seems to be turning to the Pentagon and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Senator Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, appeared in the video with five other Democratic lawmakers who served in the military or the intelligence community.

“Our laws are clear,” he said. “You can refuse illegal orders.” The other lawmakers repeated a similar message.

The lawmakers did not refer to a particular order that they viewed as illegal. But Mr. Kelly and others in the video earlier raised concerns about the fate of U.S. troops involved in the 21 strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

“What does this mean for their future if they find out later that they did this without legal justification?” he asked in an interview with NBC. “It puts them in legal jeopardy at some point.”

The brief video drew the ire of Mr. Trump, who called last week for the lawmakers to be punished and suggested that they be executed. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Mr. Trump wrote on his social media site. He shared another person’s post that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an online post on Monday that the video was “despicable, reckless, and false,” and he asserted that the lawmakers, whom he disparaged as the “Seditious Six,” were encouraging troops to “ignore the orders of their Commanders.”

“Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” he wrote.

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s accusations, all six of the lawmakers said that they had been subjected to death threats.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Mr. Kelly said on Monday in a statement. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

As part of their training, troops are told that they should not follow orders that are illegal or immoral, such as the intentional targeting of unarmed civilians.

Charlie Swift, a lawyer and a retired lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, said that in his view the  lawmakers in the video made a “true statement of the law” when they said troops should refuse illegal orders.

Mr. Kelly’s statements are also probably protected by the speech and debate clause that protects members of Congress from prosecution, Mr. Swift said.

Mr. Hegseth’s threat to recall and punish Mr. Kelly for speech made long after he retired is without precedent, Mr. Swift said. Retired officers are typically recalled for crimes committed only while they were serving on active duty, he noted.

Mr. Hegseth dismissed that distinction, contending that Mr. Kelly’s remarks were “addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation — lending the appearance of authority to his words.”

Mr. Hegseth’s threat came on the same day that a federal judge tossed out separate criminal charges against the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, saying Mr. Trump’s appointment of the prosecutor was invalid.

Some military experts maintained that it was unlikely that Mr. Hegseth would be able to prosecute Mr. Kelly. “I have no idea what they’d court-martial him for,” said Eliot A. Cohen, a military historian who worked for President George W. Bush. “It’s preposterous.”

Yes it is.