FBI requests interviews with Democrats who released video reminding military not to follow illegal orders. What did they say? And did it violate the law?

The Pentagon said on Monday that it is investigating Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, one of six Democratic lawmakers who made a video posted to social media last week reminding active duty service members that they can refuse to follow illegal orders.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, another one of the Democrats in question, revealed on Tuesday that the FBI’s counterterrorism division sent a note that “appeared to open an inquiry into me in response to a video President Trump did not like.”

Shortly after, four House Democrats who participated in the video released a joint statement saying the FBI had requested interviews with them.

“President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress,” their statement said. “No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution. We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied.”

The FBI did not immediately return a request for comment.

Pentagon says it is investigating Kelly

In its statement on Monday, the Pentagon said that Kelly, a retired Navy pilot, could be recalled to active duty for “court-martial proceedings” or other measures related to his alleged misconduct.

In a separate statement posted to X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the video made by the members of Congress, whom he referred to as the “Seditious Six,” was “despicable, reckless, and false.”

Hegseth said that Kelly was singled out by the Pentagon because he is the only lawmaker featured in the video who has formally retired from the military and remains subject to the Uniform Military Code of Justice.

“Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately,” Hegseth added.

Responding in his own X post, Kelly recounted some of his experiences in the Navy and as a NASA astronaut, shared a photo of some of the medals he earned, and said he would not be intimidated.

“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,” Kelly wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

Hegseth responded by mocking Kelly’s uniform and later called the video a “politically-motivated influence operation.”

“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,” Kelly wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

Hegseth responded by mocking Kelly’s uniform. He later called the video a “politically-motivated influence operation.”

Who are the lawmakers and what did they say in the video?

In the 90-second clip, the lawmakers — including Kelly, Slotkin and Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio, both of Pennsylvania — accused the administration of “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

Collectively, they have decades of experience working in the military and intelligence fields. Slotkin served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst. Kelly flew combat missions during the Gulf War before NASA selected him to pilot the space shuttle. Crow, an Army Ranger, completed three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving a Bronze Star Medal for his service. Houlahan spent three years on Air Force active duty and more than a dozen years in the Air Force Reserve. Deluzio served as a surface warfare officer in the Navy and was deployed to Iraq with an Army civil affairs unit. Goodlander was an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve for 11 years, reaching the rank of lieutenant.

“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” they said. “Right now, the threats to our constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home. Our laws are clear: you can refuse illegal orders.”

President Trump responded by accusing the lawmakers of sedition, calling them “traitors” and suggesting they be arrested and put on trial.

“It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,” Trump wrote in one of a flurry of posts to his Truth Social account on Thursday morning. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.”

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” the president wrote in another.

Trump also reshared a post that read: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”

Kelly responded to Trump in a separate post on X.

“I’ve had a missile blow up next to my airplane, been shot at dozens of times by anti-aircraft fire, and launched into orbit — all for my country,” Kelly wrote. “I never thought I’d see a President call for my execution.”

What constitutes ‘seditious behavior’?

Despite what Trump and his team have claimed, none of these lawmakers “are literally saying to 1.3 million active duty service members to defy the chain of command [and] not to follow lawful orders,” as White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt put it last week.

Instead, the Democrats explicitly and repeatedly referred to “unlawful orders” as a way of reminding service members what U.S. law allows (and often requires) them to do if they’re directed to break the law.

When someone joins the U.S. military, they swear an oath of enlistment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies” and “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” What kind of orders are they obligated to obey? “Any lawful general order or regulation,” according to Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which was enacted in 1950 and applies to all branches of the military. If a service member fails to obey a lawful order, they can be “punished as a court-martial may direct.”

But what about an unlawful order? The Manual for Courts-Martial is unambiguous: the requirement to “obey orders,” it says, “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”

Restating this fact might be politically provocative, but it does not constitute “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” as Trump posted on Truth Social.

Under U.S. federal law, “sedition” generally refers to conspiratorial conduct and advocacy knowingly meant to incite rebellion or violent resistance against the lawful authority of the United States; punishment for civilians includes a fine and up to 20 years in prison. In contrast, treason is punishable by death, but that requires much more severe and direct action: joining an enemy army, helping a foreign enemy in wartime or participating in armed rebellion at the level of war.

“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” the six Democrats said in a joint statement. “Our servicemembers should know that we have their backs as they fulfill their oath to the Constitution and obligation to follow only lawful orders. It is not only the right thing to do, but also our duty.”

White House says Trump does not actually want to execute these lawmakers

During a briefing with reporters on Thursday afternoon, Leavitt was asked to clarify if the president wanted to execute members of Congress.

“No,” Leavitt said before criticizing the lawmakers who made the video.

“You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the president’s lawful orders,” Leavitt said. “The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed. It can lead to chaos, and that’s what these members of Congress who swore an oath to abide by the Constitution are essentially encouraging.

“To signal to people serving under this commander in chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office — that is a very, very dangerous message,” she added. “And it perhaps is punishable by law.”

In a radio interview with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday, Trump denied that he threatened the lawmakers with death, but said he believes they broke the law.

“I’m not threatening them, but I think they’re in serious trouble,” Trump said. “I’m not threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death. That was seditious behavior.”

“These are bad people,” the president said of the lawmakers. “These are people, in my opinion, that broke the law. Now what happens to them, I can’t tell you. But they broke the law.”

Why would these lawmakers create a video like this?

The six Democrats who made the video did not explicitly accuse Trump and his subordinates of issuing illegal orders; instead, they were careful to speak in hypotheticals.

But when Kelly and Slotkin were asked why they made the video, both mentioned recent strikes against alleged drug boats in Latin America and the deployment of National Guard troops in U.S. cities.

Trump “has talked about sending troops into more U.S. cities, he’s talked about invoking the Insurrection Act,” Kelly told CNN.

“All of us had been getting outrage from folks in uniform, folks in the intelligence community saying like, ‘Hey, we’re really concerned,'” Slotkin told MS NOW. “’You know, I’m being deployed to a city or, you know, inside the United States, or I’m being asked to conduct strikes in the [Caribbean]. And I don’t understand … like how this is legal?'”

Since early September, the Trump administration has been conducting a controversial campaign of attacking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean — which some critics, lawmakers and legal experts view as a violation of international law.

In previous administrations, the Coast Guard would be used to intercept boats and arrest drug smugglers — not kill them. So far, Trump’s strikes have killed more than 80 people without a legal process.

According to the administration, simply declaring an armed conflict gives Trump the power to treat any suspected smugglers as “unlawful combatants” under international law — enemy fighters who can be killed without legal review, even when they pose no threat.

In response, experts have argued that drug cartels are not engaged in “hostilities” against the U.S. — the legal standard for armed conflict — because selling a dangerous product is different from conducting an armed attack.

It is illegal for the military to deliberately target civilians who aren’t directly participating in hostilities — even suspected criminals.

“The notion that the United States — and this is what the administration says is their justification — is involved in an armed conflict with any drug dealers, any Venezuelan drug dealers, is ludicrous,” Rep. Jim Himes, a Democrat from Connecticut and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently told CBS’s Face the Nation. “It wouldn’t stand up in a single court of law.”

“This is not stretching the envelope,” Geoffrey Corn, a retired judge advocate general lawyer who was formerly the Army’s senior adviser for law-of-war issues, added in an interview with the New York Times. “This is shredding it. This is tearing it apart.”

For months, lawmakers have pressed the Trump administration on whether service members involved in the strikes could be held legally responsible for deaths that may later be ruled unlawful.

The United States Code of Military Justice “prohibits the premeditated and unlawful killing of a human being,” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in an October letter, “putting our service members in the impossible position of risking criminal prosecution for carrying out an unlawful order to kill civilians or risking prosecution for disobeying superior orders.”

Experts have also questioned whether Trump’s push to send National Guard troops to U.S. cities is legal — or whether it constitutes an unlawful attempt to create what one federal judge described as a “national police force.”

On Thursday, a different federal judge ruled that the administration’s use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., “exceeded the bounds of [its] statutory authority.” Days earlier, a judge in Tennessee temporarily blocked the state’s deployment in Memphis, where troops had been ordered by the governor at Trump’s behest. The administration is appealing both decisions.