(Washington) An American judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the sanctions procedure initiated by the Department of Defense against a Democratic senator who had provoked the ire of Donald Trump by suggesting in a video to the military and intelligence agents to “refuse illegal orders”.
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This is a new setback in this issue for the American president, who had described this video of several parliamentarians including this Democratic senator, Mark Kelly, as “seditious” and “punishable by the death penalty”. A federal grand jury has already rejected requests for indictments against the parliamentarians this week.
Concerning Mark Kelly, who is also a former US Navy pilot and ex-astronaut, Judge Richard Leon justified his decision by writing that the US government had “violated Mr. Kelly’s freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment” of the Constitution, which notably protects freedom of expression, and threatened those “of millions of retirees from the military institution”.
The former US Navy fighter pilot is opposing an administrative procedure launched by the Pentagon with a view to downgrading his rank of captain and, at the same time, his retirement pension.
According to the magistrate, Mark Kelly’s request has a good chance of being accepted on the merits.
The judge “clearly established that Pete Hegseth (the American Secretary of Defense, Editor’s note) violated the Constitution by trying to punish me for comments I made,” Mark Kelly said Thursday on X.
In a video released in November, Democratic parliamentarians addressed the military and intelligence agents: “You can refuse illegal orders.”
“Today, threats against our Constitution do not only come from abroad, but also from here, at home,” they denounced.
The elected officials did not explicitly cite specific orders, but the video was published at a time of strong criticism of the Trump administration over the legality of American strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific against boats accused of participating in drug trafficking.
