Lawyers for Sen. Mark Kelly filed a lawsuit Monday in search of to dam Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s transfer to chop Kelly’s retirement pay and scale back his rank in response to Kelly’s urging of US service members to refuse illegal orders. The lawsuit argues punishing Kelly violates the First Amendment and could have a chilling impact on legislative oversight.
“If permitted to stand, the Secretary’s censure and the grade-determination proceedings that he has directed will inflict immediate and irreparable harm,” the lawsuit says. “The censure, the grade-reduction process, and its inevitable outcome impose official punishment for protected speech, chill legislative oversight, and threaten reductions in rank and pay.”
Hegseth and the Defense Department haven’t but responded to a request for remark.
Kelly’s lawsuit, which additionally names the Defense Department, Navy and Navy Secretary, comes per week after Hegseth introduced the Pentagon would take administration motion in opposition to Kelly, together with lowering the pay Kelly receives as a retired Navy captain, and issuing a secretarial letter of censure. Hegseth and President Donald Trump have publicly attacked Kelly over a video posted in November by Kelly – and 5 different lawmakers – with a historical past of army service, urging service members to not obey illegal orders that may very well be issued by the Trump administration.
“When viewed in totality, your pattern of conduct demonstrates specific intent to counsel servicemembers to refuse lawful orders.
This pattern demonstrates that you were not providing abstract legal education about the duty to refuse patently illegal orders. You were specifically counseling servicemembers to refuse particular operations that you have characterized as illegal,” Hegseth wrote in Kelly’s letter of censure, which was obtained by NCS.
Trump mentioned in social media posts that the lawmakers “should be in jail right now” and known as the act “sedition.”
In the swimsuit, Kelly’s authorized staff argues that the punishment of Kelly is retaliation meant to stifle criticism.
“Each of these actions also signals to retired service members and Members of Congress that criticism of the Executive’s use of the armed forces may be met with retaliation through military channels,” it says.
The stress between Kelly and Hegseth has boiled over into at the least one in-person confrontation, when Kelly was asking Hegseth questions throughout a categorized briefing to Senators. NCS previously reported that Hegseth turned to accuse Kelly of injuring unit cohesion and undermining the chain of command; two individuals who heard the remarks instructed NCS that Kelly repeated his operational questions in regards to the briefing, whereas Hegseth continued to harp on the video Kelly and the opposite lawmakers launched.
The content material of the video is “not different whatsoever” from what army legal professionals advise troops, Rachel VanLandingham, a former Air Force Judge advocate and present regulation professor at Southwestern Law School, instructed NCS.
“What they said was just a generalized version of what military lawyers brief, what folks in basic training are briefed on, folks at professional military education courses are briefed on,” VanLandingham beforehand instructed NCS. “A, it was well within the framework of an appropriate articulation of the law, and B, it was well within their duties as sitting senators and representatives to reiterate this advice, because they’re responsible for the law that these service members were supposed to be following.”
The lawsuit filed on Monday says the exercise Hegseth factors to in his letter of censure are “quintessential legislative and oversight activity,” and lie on the core of “the long-recognized immunity for legislative acts.”
Kelly mentioned in an announcement Monday that Hegseth is “coming after what I earned through my twenty-five years of military service.”
“Pete Hegseth wants our longest-serving military veterans to live with the constant threat that they could be deprived of their rank and pay years or even decades after they leave the military just because he or another secretary of defense doesn’t like what they’ve said,” Kelly mentioned. “That’s not the way things work in the United States of America, and I won’t stand for it.”
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