A couple of weeks ago, after several Democratic military veterans urged service members to reject illegal orders, the White House began a furious pushback campaign that was extreme, even by contemporary standards. Donald Trump helped lead the charge, insisting that the Democratic lawmakers, who’d done nothing wrong, had engaged in “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
The story has faded in recent days — allegations of war crimes seem to have taken some of the wind out of the partisans’ sails — but the administration is still pursuing the matter on multiple fronts.
At the Pentagon, for example, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth continues to target Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona with tactics that even some congressional Republicans have denounced. Meanwhile, at the White House, the president used his social media platform earlier this week to press for investigations into his political foes.
But of particular interest are the developments within federal law enforcement.
MS NOW reported last week that FBI and Justice Department officials had contacted the U.S. Capitol Police to arrange interviews with the six Democratic lawmakers in question, each of whom confirmed that they’d been contacted by the House and Senate sergeants at arms on behalf of the FBI.
Bloomberg Law, citing three sources familiar with the situation, reported that FBI leaders are “pressuring the bureau’s domestic terrorism agents to open a seditious conspiracy investigation” into the Democrats who urged service members to follow the law. Those efforts, however, are running into an important snag. From the report:
Career leaders at the bureau’s Washington Field Office have thus far pushed back on the request for a formal investigation, which would follow President Donald Trump’s call for a trial into the Democrats’ ‘seditious behavior,’ the people familiar said. The Washington office supervisors cited a lack of legal and factual basis to initiate a criminal case against the senators and House members who posted a video Nov. 18 reminding service members and the intelligence community of their rights to ‘refuse illegal orders.’ According to the Bloomberg report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, FBI leaders want an investigation, while the bureau’s domestic terrorism agents have pointed to the inconvenient reality that there’s no reason to launch such an investigation. The same report added, “FBI headquarters requested that the investigation arise under the rarely invoked seditious conspiracy statute that DOJ used to convict a small number of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys leaders for organizing the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.” (The FBI didn’t respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.) If true, the report suggests FBI leaders are pushing a truly bonkers approach, equating lawmakers’ expression of support for the rule of law with the actions of insurrectionists who attacked their own country’s democracy. In light of this report, it’s worth emphasizing that several officials have been purged from the FBI in recent months after they were deemed insufficiently loyal to a Trumpian agenda. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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