US War Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced on Monday that Pentagon will be punishing Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat and retired captain of the US Navy, but cutting the pay he receives as a retired soldier after the lawmaker appeared in a video where he, along with other leaders of his party, called upon US soldiers to refuse orders from the government that are illegal.
Pete Hegseth made the announcement in a post on social media platform
Hegseth also said that following this, Pentagon will be reducing the pay Kelly receives and a secretariat letter of censure has been issued in this regard.
Kelly himself reacted to the development on Monday morning (local time), where he called Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in our country’s history,” and said that despite the censure, he “will fight this with everything I’ve got — not for myself, but to send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
The video in question, which has prompted the Trump administration to take action against Kelly, features six Democratic senators who said that “threats to our Constitution” were coming “from right here at home,” and they urged members of the US armed forces and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”
The video, however, did not mention clearly which specific orders they were asking the servicemembers to refuse. Notably, there has been bipartisan concerns raised in the US Congress over airstrikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
The Pentagon, however, claimed that those strikes were in accordance with the law since the alleged drug smugglers have been declared terrorists by the US.
Trump’s history of calling for imprisonment of political adversaries
Since he began his second term as the US President, Donald Trump has often called for the imprisonment of his political opponents.
The Trump Department of Justice has brought criminal charges against three of his critics — James Comey, the former FBI chief; John Bolton, the former national security adviser of the White House; and New York state Attorney General Letitia James.
Charges against both James and Comey were later junked by a judge while Bolton has pleaded not guilty.
