US Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, announced Monday that he “filed a lawsuit against the secretary of defense because there are few things as important as standing up for the rights of the very Americans who fought to defend our freedoms.”
The Arizona Democrat is suing not only Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth but also the US Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, and Navy Secretary John Phelan over the DOD leader’s effort to cut Kelly’s retirement pay over a November video in which he and other veterans of the military and intelligence community reminded troops that they “must refuse illegal orders.”
Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) released the short video as Hegseth and President Donald Trump were in the midst of their deadly boat-bombing spree and ramping up threats against Venezuela, whose leader they have since abducted to put him on trial in the United States.
Of the six Democrats in the video, Kelly is the only one still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Given that, Hegseth initially launched a probe into the senator and threatened to call him back to active duty to face a court-martial, but ultimately revealed last week that the DOD was working to reduce his retirement pay and had issued a formal letter of censure.
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“Pete Hegseth is coming after what I earned through my 25 years of military service, in violation of my rights as an American, as a retired veteran, and as a United States senator whose job is to hold him—and this or any administration—accountable,” Kelly said Monday. “His unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: If you speak out and say something that the president or secretary of defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted.”
“In 1986, at just 22 years old, I took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. I have fulfilled that oath every day since, but I never expected that I would have to defend it against a secretary of defense or president,” said Kelly, also a former US astronaut. “But I’ve never shied away from a fight for our country, and I won’t shy away from this one. Because our freedom of speech, the separation of powers, and due process are not just words on a page, they are bedrock principles of our democracy that has lasted 250 years and will last 250 more as long as patriotic Americans are willing to stand up for our rights.”
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Kelly’s 46-page complaint, filed in federal court in Washington, DC, states that “defendants’ actions violate numerous constitutional guarantees and have no basis in statute,” citing “the First Amendment, the speech or debate clause, the separation of powers, due process, 10 USC § 1370, and the Administrative Procedure Act.”
The senator is asking the court “to declare the censure letter, reopening determination, retirement grade determination proceedings, and related actions unlawful and unconstitutional; to vacate those actions; to enjoin their enforcement; and to preserve the status of a coequal Congress and an apolitical military.”
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