Hegseth Wants Pentagon to Investigate Sen. Mark Kelly, a Veteran, for Reminding Military Servicemembers of Their Oath Not to Follow Illegal Orders

A hit dog will holler, and as evidence grows that Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Hegseth issued illegal orders to murder shipwreck survivors in the Caribbean, they have reacted by threatening anyone who points this out. Now Hegseth is stretching the power of military discipline beyond its breaking point in order to target a U.S. senator for his opinions.

CNN reports:

The Pentagon said Monday that it is investigating Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired US Navy captain, in light of “serious allegations of misconduct” the department has received against him, and could even recall him to active duty to face a court martial or administrative punishment.

The investigation comes as President Donald Trump has been pushing relentlessly for consequences for Kelly and five other Democratic lawmakers over a video they made reminding servicemembers of their duty to disobey illegal orders. …

Because Kelly was a senior officer who retired from the Navy, he is required to remain available for recall to the military by law. …

Steve Vladeck, a professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and a CNN legal analyst, said that a court martial for Kelly is technically a viable option for the Pentagon because three different appellate courts have upheld that it’s constitutional to court-martial retired servicemembers.

But the Kelly case “is pretty powerful proof” of why that should not be an option, Vladeck said.

“Going all the way back to the Founding, we’ve been wary of the exercise of military jurisdiction over civilians—so much so that the Supreme Court has struck down statutes authorizing courts-martial of, e.g., former servicemembers; military contractors; and the dependents of servicemembers,” Vladeck said. “Retired servicemembers differ in that they remain at least theoretically subject to recall, but it still makes no sense to subject individuals to military jurisdiction in perpetuity just because, at some point in the past, they were on active duty.”

It’s no surprise that an administration that orders war crimes will also seek to use military discipline to suppress freedom of speech and infringe on the independence of a separate branch of government. But it shows the extent to which this administration is a thorough enemy of constitutional government.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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