Elissa Slotkin Now Under Investigation as Mark Kelly Sues Hegseth

Senator Elissa Slotkin said Monday that she has learned federal prosecutors are investigating her for a video she made in November, along with other congressional colleagues, urging members of the military to disobey illegal orders.

Slotkin said she found out about the investigation from Jeanine Pirro, appointed by President Trump as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Pirro had emailed the Senate’s sergeant at arms requesting an interview with Slotkin or her personal attorney, according to The New York Times. Pirro’s office declined to confirm or deny the investigation to the Times.

Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, helped to organize the video, along with five other Democratic members of Congress who served in the military: Senator Mark Kelly and Representatives Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan. They each urged service members to refuse illegal orders, drawing anger from President Trump, who accused them of sedition and suggested they be executed.

The investigation of Slotkin follows Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s attempts to target Kelly, censuring him and going after his military pension. In response, Kelly has sued Hegseth on free speech and due process grounds.

While Slotkin isn’t a military veteran, a Justice Department investigation could result in criminal charges. Is the Trump administration willing to try and punish Slotkin merely for exercising her free speech rights?

Multiple military officials have sought legal counseling in the wake of President Donald Trump’s escalating (and illegal) military operations in the Caribbean.

Steve Woolford, a resource counselor with the GI Rights Hotline, told HuffPost that calls for advice started coming in at the end of September, after the U.S. military had killed 17 people in a series of extrajudicial strikes on boats the government claims—but won’t prove—are smuggling drugs.

The official, who Woolford said had an important role in approving the strikes, questioned whether what they were doing was a “legal military operation.”

Woolford recalled the reluctant service member saying, “‘This doesn’t look like what the military is supposed to be doing, and the military is doing it.’” Woolford referred the member to legal counsel.

“They didn’t want to be doing it,” he told HuffPost.

In October, another service member reached out to Woolford to express concern that they would be ordered to participate in future boat strikes.

Since then, the calls from concerned service members have only become more common. Hours after the U.S. military’s large-scale operation to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Woolford said the hotline received three calls from service members. One expressed concerns that the operation was unlawful, and another described it as “imperialist.”

While Woolford referred his worried callers to The Orders Project, a group providing legal advice to military service members, nonprofit Vice President Brenner Fissell said that he’s received no calls from officers involved in the strikes.

“People are really scared of at all stepping out of line,” Fissell told HuffPost. “I mean, when you see someone like [Admiral Alvin] Holsey lose his position, and he’s one of the top five people in the military, do you really want to reach out?”

Holsey, who has served as commander of the U.S. Southern Command for only a year, offered in December to resign from his position after he questioned the strikes’ legality, sources told CNN.

The number of calls to Woolford may continue to rise, as the U.S. military continues to wade into Trump’s illegal war. Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer, told HuffPost that capturing Maduro had triggered the Geneva Conventions, raising the stakes of U.S. strikes on vessels linked to Venezuela. “These individuals involved in mere criminality are civilians who are not directly participating in the hostilities, and therefore not legally targetable,” he said.

Service members stuck executing these strikes were left in a “terrible bind,” he said.

A 21-year old anti-ICE protester has been left permanently blinded in California after a Department of Homeland Security agent shot him in the face with a nonlethal round at point-blank range on Friday.

Kaden Rummler can be seen on video rushing to help a fellow protester at Civic Center Plaza in Santa Ana before being shot by a federal agent. He crumples to the ground in a heap, covering his face before an officer drags him away by his hoodie. Rummler’s aunt said he was left with a fractured skull and shards of plastic, glass, and metal stuck all throughout his eyes and face, and would have died if not for the six hours of surgery he went through.

“That could have cost him his life,” Jeri Rees told the Los Angeles Times. “But now, for the next six weeks, he can’t sneeze or cough because it could do a lot of damage.… The other officers were mocking him, saying, ‘You’re going to lose your eye.’”

This is one of countless instances of excessive, brutal force being used against U.S. residents in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Rummler’s blinding happened just two days after ICE shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin described the scene as “a highly coordinated campaign of violence where rioters wielded shields,” but had no comment on the use of excessive force from her agents. A spokesperson from the Santa Ana Police Department said the only coordinated violence they saw were demonstrators throwing orange cones.

The FBI searched the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday, as part of what government officials said was an investigation into the sharing of government secrets, The New York Times reports.

Hannah Natanson has been covering the White House’s efforts to cut down the federal workforce and reshape the civil service to support President Trump’s agenda. In her work, she spoke to several government employees frustrated with the Trump administration. The Post said that the bureau was investigating a government contractor accused of illegally holding onto classified materials.

Federal agents searched Natanson’s home as well as her personal devices. The search warrant stated that the investigation concerns Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland with a top-secret security clearance accused of accessing classified intelligence reports. Perez-Lugones allegedly took the reports home, and they were found in his lunchbox and basement, according to an FBI affidavit.

Natanson told the Post that a phone and a smartwatch were taken by agents. While Trump and other administration officials have a reputation for being hostile to the press, a search of a reporter’s home is extremely rare.

This story has been updated.

The Michigan Ford autoworker who screamed “pedophile protector” at President Trump on Tuesday—eliciting a “Fuck you” and a middle finger from the president—has been suspended from work.

White House communications head Stephen Cheung described the man as a “lunatic” who was “wildly screaming expletives in a complete fit of rage.” But TJ Sabula, a 40-year-old United Auto Workers Local 600 line worker, seems to be in his right mind, and says he would probably do it all over again.

“As far as calling him out, definitely no regrets whatsoever,” Sabula told The Washington Post, after confirming that he was the one to heckle the president. He also added that he believes he’s being “targeted for political retribution” for “embarrassing Trump in front of his friends.”

“I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” said Sabula, an independent who is particularly disturbed by the lack of transparency surrounding the Epstein files. “And today I think I did that.” A fundraiser for Sabula has already raised $150,000.