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U.S. President Donald Trump has lashed out at six congressional Democrats who this week released a video to social media advising troops they can decline unlawful orders, branding it seditious behaviour.
The Democrats in the video served in the military or the intelligence community. They are: senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, as well as House members Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania.
“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” Kelly said in the video.
In the same video, Slotkin added: “We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship.”
While they don’t specify which orders could be considered unlawful, it is a concern that Kelly, a former captain in the U.S. Navy, has raised for several weeks in interviews with reporters, in the wake of the series of deadly strikes the U.S. military has launched on boats in Caribbean and eastern Pacific waters that the administration alleges are carrying drugs.
The Department of Justice has reportedly offered the legal opinion that those involved in in the boat strikes cannot be prosecuted, but the statute of limitations in U.S. military jurisprudence can sometimes last years, or not at all for capital crimes .
The video has led to blowback from Republicans, culminating in Trump reacting on social media late Wednesday and into Thursday.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” he said in the latest Truth Social post on the matter.
“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” he posted the night before. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”
Asked by a reporter at a Thursday briefing if Trump really meant that the Democratic lawmakers, who are military veterans, behind the video should be killed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “No.”
“Every single order that is given to this United States military by this commander-in-chief and through this command chain of command, through the secretary of war, is lawful,” said Leavitt, who added that defying orders could create national security risks and lead to deaths.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former Judge Advocate General (JAG), was critical of his Democratic colleagues, albeit more measured.
“To say that I am disturbed this video is an understatement,” he posted on X on Thursday morning. “As a former Air Force JAG, I take the issue of unlawful orders very seriously, and I cannot find a single example of an illegal order during this administration. To that end, I believe these Democrats owe it to the country to be specific about which orders they think are unlawful.”
Since Sept. 2, at least 88 people have died in the boat strikes. Relatives of the small number of victims whose identities are known have balked at the characterization that they were drug traffickers. Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has alleged that a Colombian citizen killed in September was a fisherman.
Both Trump and Vice-President JD Vance have joked about nervous fisherman in the Central and South American waters.
The Trump administration, with Pete Hegseth serving as defence secretary, has said the military is engaged in “a non-international armed conflict” and that those on the drug-carrying boats can be considered enemy combatants.
The administration has cited drug gangs it alleges operate under the auspices of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has pulled military assets from other parts of the world, raising the spectre that it could act within Venezuela as well.
The administration also cites hundreds of thousands of drug toxicity deaths in the U.S. in recent years. The main source of drug toxicity deaths is fentanyl, which experts in international trafficking say is not likely to originate in Venezuela, but instead is most often reaching Americans via smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border.
While some Republicans have expressed concerns about the lack of information they’ve received from the administration in briefings about the strikes, Senate Democrats have not been able to get enough of them on board in a pair of votes seeking to limit Trump’s authority without congressional approval.
Democrats have questioned why, if the matter is so paramount, two survivors of the boat strikes were repatriated to their home countries and not arrested or held for extensive questioning.
Graham told CBS’s Face the Nation last month that “the game has changed” with drug cartels. He said he believes Trump, as commander-in-chief of the military, has the authority to proceed with the boat strikes.
The most famous U.S. case involving a person being prosecuted for what constituted a lawful order was William Laws Calley Jr., who as an army lieutenant led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre, the most notorious war crime in modern American military history. Calley, who died last year, was sentenced to life in prison at trial for the deaths of 22 Vietnamese, though his sentence was commuted by president Richard Nixon.
Late in life, Calley apologized and said “not a day goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai.”
He said his mistake was following orders, which had been his defence when he was tried.
The human rights chief for the United Nations and France’s foreign minister have said they believe the strikes violate international law. Canada had been largely silent about the attacks until early this month, when Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said it was “within the purview of U.S. authorities to make that determination.”
Anand, like other Canadian officials CBC News asked for comment, stressed that the U.S. strikes were separate from drug interdiction efforts the Canadian military and the U.S. are each involved with as part of Operation Caribbe.
Trump has occasionally characterized behaviour he disliked as treasonous or traitorous.
Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has occasionally called for jailing people whom he sees as political enemies. This time, Democrats have alleged, he has a more compliant Justice Department willing to target some of those individuals.
Among those who raised his ire in the past to face indictment are his former national security adviser John Bolton, New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey.
