U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan said it’s unclear what crime the Department of Justice was trying to charge her with when a grand jury refused an indictment over a video in which she, with five other Democratic colleagues, called on service members to “refuse illegal orders.”
“The regular American people that comprised the grand jury saw this for what it was, which was kind of a spurious misuse, abuse of the power of the federal government against the people,” Houlahan, of Chester, said in an interview Wednesday.
“It’s not about me or my colleagues,” continued Houlahan, a former Air Force officer. “It’s about the fact that the Constitution allows for all of us to be treated as equals, and all of us to have the freedom to speak with freedom.”
The Justice Department investigated the six Democratic lawmakers who made the video, all of whom previously served in the military or intelligence agencies. But a Washington grand jury would not sign off on charges on Tuesday, The Associated Press reported.
It’s a setback for President Donald Trump’s administration, which has targeted the lawmakers in a variety of ways since November, when the president claimed the video was an act of sedition.
Houlahan said none of the Democrats’ lawyers could identify what charges could have legitimately been brought against them.
“Collectively, we all, of course, have unfortunately had to secure lawyers in this process,” she said. “And to a person, none of them could come up really with what it was that we had purportedly done. And clearly the people in the grand jury saw the same thing.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, an Allegheny County Democrat who also appeared in the video, said in an interview Wednesday he is “not surprised at all” by the grand jury’s decision.
“The fact that the Trump administration and their lawyers want to try to charge us with crimes for stating the law and saying words that they don’t like is outrageous, and of course, not something that you should be able to throw people in prison for,” said Deluzio, who served in the Navy.
In a news conference Wednesday, some of the lawmakers suggested legal action against the Trump administration is on the table.
“There will be accountability, and they should be preserving documents, preparing for what’s coming,” Deluzio said.
Trump accused the Democratic lawmakers of sedition “punishable by death” after they posted the video in November, warning service members and intelligence workers to “refuse illegal orders.” In the video, the Democrats urged service members and intelligence professionals not to “give up the ship,” a sentiment Deluzio repeated Tuesday night.
The phrase, which Deluzio has long referenced, is a rallying cry that’s hung on the wall at the Naval Academy’s Memorial Hall.
“It’s a phrase that means a lot, and it means a lot in this moment of great stress to our country — that this thing is worth our efforts and that we should not give it up,” Deluzio said in the Wednesday interview.
The Democrats did not mention any specific orders in the video, but lawmakers who appeared in the video expressed concerns at the time about strikes on boats in the Caribbean and National Guard operations in U.S. cities.
Houlahan said they continue to be concerned about “the unlawfulness of the administration.”
The video also included U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), a former CIA officer; U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.), a former Navy captain; U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D., N.H.), a former intelligence officer; and U.S. Rep. Jason Crow (D., Colo.), a former paratrooper and Army Ranger.
The lawmakers were contacted by the FBI late last year.
Federal prosecutors unsuccessfully tried to secure the indictment against all six lawmakers in the video, The New York Times reported. The office that pursued the case is led U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News personality who served as district attorney in Westchester County, N.Y., during the 1990s and early 2000s.
Grand jury rejections are extraordinarily rare, but have occurred repeatedly in recent months in Washington, as citizens who have heard the government’s evidence have come away underwhelmed in a number of cases. Prosecutors could try again to secure an indictment.
Attention on the lawmakers’ video escalated days after they initially posted it when Trump began his social media tirade in November.
“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” he wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”
He also shared posts from supporters calling for retribution against the Democrats, including one that said, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” and another calling them domestic terrorists.
Houlahan said at the time she was “profoundly disappointed” in her GOP colleagues for not defending the Democrats, a sentiment she repeated on Wednesday.
“The fact that the president and the people around him, in hearing a reminder about the law, reacted the way they did, which is to call for our death, arrest, to try to imprison us, tells me more about them than I could ever know,” Deluzio said Wednesday.
“A normal person, a normal president, would be reminding their troops of their obligations to follow the law as well because they care about the rule of law,” he added.
Houlahan and Deluzio reported bomb threats at their district offices after Trump went on offense in November.
Trump told Fox News Radio that he was “not threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble,” adding that, “in the old days, it was death.”
His administration has cited a different military law that says orders are presumed to be lawful and the importance of “good order and discipline.”
“Their foolish screed sows doubt and confusion — which only puts our warriors in danger,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the time.
Kelly, the only lawmaker who served long enough to officially retire and therefore falls under The Pentagon’s jurisdiction, is in a another fight with Trump’s administration over the video.
Hegseth has censured Kelly for participating in the video and is trying to retroactively demote him from his retired rank of captain.
In response, Kelly is suing Hegseth to block those proceedings, calling them an unconstitutional act of retribution. During a hearing last week, the judge appeared to be skeptical of key arguments that a government attorney made in defense of Kelly’s Jan. 5 censure by Hegseth.
This article contains reporting from The Associated Press
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