Federal prosecutors failed to secure an indictment against six Democratic members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio of Fox Chapel, who released a video last year telling servicemembers they have an obligation to refuse illegal orders, The New York Times reported Tuesday night, citing four unnamed people familiar with the matter.
The Times reported that a grand jury in the Federal District Court in Washington rejected prosecutors’ request for an indictment, “sending a signal that they did not believe that the lawmakers had committed any crimes.”
The Justice Department declined to comment to The Times.
“I will not be intimidated for a single second by the Trump Administration or Justice Department lawyers who tried and failed to indict me today,” Deluzio said in a statement Tuesday night.
“American citizens on a grand jury refused to go along with this attempt to charge me with a crime for stating the law in a way Trump and his enablers didn’t like,” added Deluzio, a former Navy officer in his second term in Congress representing part of Allegheny County and all of Beaver County. “They may want Americans to be afraid to speak out or to disagree — but patriotism demands courage in this moment.”
The 90-second video ignited controversy almost immediately after it was released in November. While the six lawmakers said the obligation to refuse illegal orders is established military protocol, President Donald Trump said making the video amounted to “seditious behavior” and could be “punishable by death.”
Trump said each of the lawmakers — all of them former members of the military or intelligence community — should be arrested and put on trial. He shared a post from another Truth Social user saying the lawmakers should be hanged.
The Justice Department reached out to the lawmakers seeking voluntary interviews. Deluzio told TribLive last week that he did not intend to voluntarily comply with that request.
Other lawmakers in the video included U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA officer; U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former Navy officer and astronaut; U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania’s Chester County, a former Air Force officer; U.S. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger and officer; and U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, a former Navy Reserve intelligence officer.
In their video, the lawmakers did not cite any specific orders they thought were illegal and should be ignored.
When the video was released, the administration’s decisions to deploy military troops to U.S. cities and conduct military strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean had raised legal questions and drawn criticism from some.