Wednesday marks the deadline War Secretary Pete Hegseth set for Navy Secretary John Phelan’s review of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who was among a group of Democratic lawmakers who warned service members against following illegal orders.
This deadline marks the latest moment of the ongoing saga that began in November when Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers who previously served in the military or intelligence community shared a video on social media warning current service members of the dangers of carrying out illegal orders.
What is Kelly being investigated for?
President Donald Trump and Hegseth have accused the handful of lawmakers of subtly trying to undermine them with the armed forces and have said their actions could amount to sedition. The Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly stood by their video message, in which they accurately stated U.S. law.
Kelly was joined by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) in the video.
Pentagon officials announced on Nov. 24 that a review would be conducted into Kelly’s conduct under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, because, unlike the others involved in the video, he is still obligated to follow the UCMJ as a retired veteran.
This review will “determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures,” Pentagon officials said in a statement. One day after that announcement, Hegseth shared a memorandum on social media sent to Phelan, referring the matter to him and asking for a briefing on the outcome “no later than December 10, 2025.”
Democrats say review process sets ‘dangerous precedent’
The Democratic members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, excluding Kelly, wrote a letter to Phelan earlier this week in which they expressed concerns about the review into their colleague.
They said in the letter that “the theory that a sitting Member of Congress should be subject to disciplinary action entirely unrelated to their service, particularly for simply restating the law as articulated in the UCMJ and the manual for Courts-Martial, sets an incredibly dangerous precedent.”
These lawmakers also cited the president and Pentagon officials’ own comments regarding the video and those in it as tainting the review process.
“While the Department’s official statement suggests that the ‘review’ will be conducted ‘ensuring due process and impartiality,’ the President and his subordinates have made fair proceedings impossible,” the letter reads. “The Department announced this targeted ‘review’ soon after the Commander-in-Chief issued several social media posts calling a video posted by Senator Kelly and other Members of Congress ‘seditious’ and ‘treason[ous],’ and specifically stating: ‘SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL … [t]heir words cannot be allowed to stand … [a]n example MUST BE SET.”
The Democrats in the video did not specify what illegal orders they should watch out for and have since demurred when pressed on whether the president or the secretary has already issued illegal orders.
Some of them have tied their video to the U.S. military operations in the Caribbean Sea that are facing legal scrutiny.
Drug boat operations center conversations about ‘illegal orders’
The military has blown up more than 20 boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean since the beginning of September, killing about 85 people. While Pentagon and administration officials have adamantly stated that these are drug smugglers intent on bringing drugs into the United States, they have not shared evidence to back up their claims.
The Trump administration maintains that it is conducting military operations in an “armed conflict” against drug cartels in Central and South America.
Hegseth and other military officials have been in touch with members of Congress regarding the operations, specifically the first one, which has come under additional scrutiny on Capitol Hill.
In the first operation targeting a purported drug vessel, the U.S. realized two people on board survived the initial strike, so the senior military officer in charge, Adm. Mitch Bradley, ordered a subsequent strike to ensure there were no survivors. The legal questions regarding the strike pertain to whether the survivors were still armed combatants and whether the military could still use lethal means against them.
TRUMP ACCUSED DEMOCRATS OF SEDITION. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Trump initially said he would not have wanted a subsequent strike to occur, and he has left it up to Hegseth to decide whether the Pentagon should give in to Congress’s request to publicly release the video of the Sept. 2 strike.
Hegseth has not committed to releasing the video, noting that operations are still being conducted and that officials do not want to give away sources and methods of their intelligence collection. However, lawmakers tucked a provision into the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 that would withhold a quarter of his travel budget unless the Pentagon provides lawmakers with “unedited video of strikes conducted against designated terrorist organizations in the area of responsibility of the United States Southern Command.”
