{"id":25901,"date":"2026-05-07T22:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25901\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:23:12","slug":"appeals-court-looks-unlikely-to-allow-hegseth-to-punish-mark-kelly-for-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/25901\/","title":{"rendered":"Appeals Court Looks Unlikely to Allow Hegseth to Punish Mark Kelly for Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

A federal appeals court panel signaled on Thursday that it would not clear the way for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to punish Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona, for warning active-duty service members not to follow illegal orders.<\/p>\n

Two of the three judges on the panel that heard the case appeared likely to side with Mr. Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut who has sued Mr. Hegseth<\/a>, saying the defense secretary violated his free speech rights. That would be enough to uphold a federal judge\u2019s ruling from February that the Trump administration had \u201ctrampled on Senator Kelly\u2019s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees\u201d in seeking to penalize him for his comments.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department had asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn the lower court\u2019s order<\/a>. That ruling had temporarily blocked Mr. Hegseth from disciplining the senator for his remarks in a video released in November<\/a> with several other Democratic members of Congress who served in the military or intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur laws are clear,\u201d Mr. Kelly said in the video. \u201cYou can refuse illegal orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

After President Trump accused Mr. Kelly of sedition and called for him to be hanged<\/a>, Mr. Hegseth echoed the accusation, censured the senator and initiated a disciplinary procedure that could result in the reduction of his military rank and pension.<\/p>\n

During Thursday\u2019s hearing, Judge Florence Y. Pan sharply questioned the Justice Department\u2019s contention that speech by military retirees that could undermine good order and discipline was not protected, and that Mr. Kelly could therefore only advise active-duty service members against following illegal orders if he voluntarily gave up his rank and pension.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are people who served their country,\u201d said Judge Pan, who was appointed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. \u201cMany of them put their lives on the line, and you\u2019re saying that they have to give up their retired status in order to say something that is a textbook example \u2014 taught at West Point and the Naval Academy \u2014 that you can disobey illegal orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Bailey, an administration lawyer, said Mr. Hegseth had concluded based on other public statements the senator made around the time the video was posted that Mr. Kelly was calling on active-duty service members to reject legal orders, which would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice.<\/p>\n

He called the senator\u2019s statement in the video a \u201cwink and a nod\u201d for service members to disobey orders related to the deployment of National Guard troops in American cities and the deadly strikes<\/a> on boats the administration says are trafficking drugs. Both were policies that Mr. Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had denounced.<\/p>\n

A lawyer for the senator, Benjamin C. Mizer, rejected that argument.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe record is very clear that he didn\u2019t say that,\u201d Mr. Mizer said. He told the court that the \u201ccategories of unprotected speech are few and narrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two of the three judges on the panel, Judges Pan and Cornelia Pillard, appeared to agree and accept Mr. Kelly\u2019s claim that he was restating a fundamental principle of military law, not encouraging service members to disobey orders.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe never did say those words,\u201d said Judge Pillard, an appointee of President Barack Obama, adding later that Mr. Kelly\u2019s remarks were \u201can abstract statement of principle.\u201d<\/p>\n

The third judge on the panel suggested she was siding instead with the Trump administration, expressing open skepticism of the argument that Mr. Kelly\u2019s speech as a retired officer was protected. Judge Karen L. Henderson echoed the administration\u2019s claim that his remarks were a punishable violation of military law, particularly because Mr. Kelly\u2019s message carried further weight given his position as a member of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a senator with a bully pulpit,\u201d said Judge Henderson, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.<\/p>\n

After the hearing, Mr. Kelly reiterated that he had merely been stating a principle of military law in the video and accused the administration of trying to squelch dissent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re trying to send a message to other retired veterans,\u201d he said at a news conference outside a federal courthouse in downtown Washington. \u201cIf you say something that the president, or this administration, does not like, they\u2019re going to come after you. The president is trying to silence us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maj. Gen. Arthur Bartell, a retired Army officer who attended the hearing to support Mr. Kelly, said he was alarmed by the Justice Department\u2019s arguments. General Bartell, a member of National Security Leaders for America, a nonpartisan group, said in an interview that he worried about the ability of military retirees to speak out against the government under Mr. Trump without fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I served for was the right to be able to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal appeals court panel signaled on Thursday that it would not clear the way for Defense Secretary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15850,1696,15846,13309,8,1072,15847,15848,15843,15844,9,15845,3755,15849,7,3745,11259],"class_list":{"0":"post-25901","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-cornelia-t-l","9":"tag-defense-department","10":"tag-florence-y","11":"tag-freedom-of-speech-and-expression","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-hegseth","14":"tag-henderson","15":"tag-karen-lecraft","16":"tag-kelly","17":"tag-mark-e-1964","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-pan","20":"tag-pete","21":"tag-pillard","22":"tag-top-stories","23":"tag-united-states-defense-and-military-forces","24":"tag-united-states-politics-and-government"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116535636930770078","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}