Trump Called for Six Lawmakers' Arrest. Then His Pentagon Targeted a Senator's Pension

Trump Called for Punishment; His Secretary Used Military Power

On November 18, 2025, Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, appeared with other Democratic lawmakers in a video that told service members: "You can refuse illegal orders."¹² Two days later, President Trump wrote: "Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL" and "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!"² In January 2026, Trump's defense secretary censured Kelly and directed a review that could reduce his retired rank and pension.³⁴

Kelly served on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the department disciplining him.¹ The executive branch had turned a senator's criticism into a threat to his military standing and income.³⁴ On February 12, Judge Richard J. Leon blocked both measures, finding that Kelly would likely prove the government had retaliated against him for speech the First Amendment protects.¹⁵

Kelly's case is the clearest instance of a broader charge: Trump's administration used federal force, prosecution and military discipline against elected officials who challenged it.¹⁶⁷ Trump chose the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, sending his nomination to the Senate on January 20, 2025, and Trump demanded the lawmakers' punishment before Hegseth acted against Kelly.²³⁸ The public documents cited here do not show Trump ordering the censure, or the arrests, restraints and indictment of the other officials; they show his demands and his officials' acts.⁹²⁶³

The video was addressed to military and intelligence personnel, and all six lawmakers in it had military or intelligence backgrounds.¹²¹⁰ Their message, reproduced in the Congressional Record, went on: "You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution."² Trump also reposted, but did not write, someone else's demand to hang them.² His posts are quoted from Representative Al Green's impeachment resolution, which the House tabled, and Kelly's complaint also reproduces them.²¹⁰

The Pentagon's Defense, and the Punishment It Chose

Kelly retired in 2011 and received retired pay.¹ Congress subjects retired regular-component officers entitled to pay to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and it provides a statutory process for reconsidering retired grade.¹¹¹²

Hegseth's January 5, 2026, letter said the censure would enter Kelly's official military personnel file, allowed a written rebuttal within 30 days, and denied an administrative appeal.³ It warned of criminal prosecution or further administrative action for continued conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline.³ The Navy's notice, issued the same day, identified the censure as the factual basis for reopening Kelly's retirement grade.⁴ Hegseth reserved the final decision for himself, and his letter specified that a lower grade would mean lower retired pay.³ An earlier November review had raised possible recall to active duty and court-martial; the measures before Leon were administrative.¹

The administration's strongest defense is that Kelly used his military credentials to address service members directly and, in context, encouraged refusal of lawful orders.³¹³ Hegseth's letter accused him of a sustained pattern of statements from June through December 2025 that described lawful military operations as illegal, undermined the chain of command, encouraged disobedience and confused troops about their duties.³ On appeal, the government argued that retirees remain part of the military establishment, can be recalled, and therefore retain obligations of discipline even while off active duty.¹³ It also conceded that retirees have a broad right to criticize military policy and leaders.¹³

Hegseth claimed Kelly's speech damaged discipline and morale, but his letter identified no service member who disobeyed an order because of it.³ Neither the letter nor Leon's ruling documents an improvement in military discipline from punishing Kelly.³¹ The government's principal First Amendment precedent, Parker v. Levy, upheld restrictions in the active-duty military setting.¹⁴ Leon rejected its extension to Kelly at the preliminary stage: Kelly was a retired officer speaking on public affairs, and the judge found his speech protected.¹

The Harm Was Already Happening

Leon, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that the defendants had "trampled on Senator Kelly's First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees."¹⁵¹

The injury was more than a threatened pension.¹ Leon cited an amicus brief submitted by 41 retired officers reporting that veterans were declining to participate in public debate because they feared official reprisal.¹ Kelly said he intended to keep speaking; Leon explained that official retaliation for protected speech is an injury even when its target refuses to be silenced.¹ The judge found irreparable harm to Kelly and a public interest in hearing retired officers' views on military affairs.¹

The injunction is preliminary. It bars the government from giving effect to the censure and the retirement-grade notice, lowering Kelly's grade, docking his pay or imposing additional punishment based on the censure.⁵ Leon granted it in part, on free-speech grounds, and left Kelly's other legal claims undecided.¹⁵

The government appealed, and on March 18 the district court said the injunction remained in full effect.¹⁶¹⁷ The D.C. Circuit heard argument on May 7, 2026; the public appellate docket, last updated September 15, listed no decision.¹⁶

The Mayor Was Already Outside When Agents Arrested Him

Months before the Kelly censure, a congressional oversight visit produced the arrest of a mayor and the indictment of a congresswoman.¹⁸¹⁹ On May 9, 2025, Representatives LaMonica McIver, Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman arrived for an unannounced oversight inspection at Delaney Hall, a detention facility in Newark.¹⁸⁶ Congress had protected such visits through the Department of Homeland Security's funding: DHS could not use covered funds to block congressional detention-facility oversight, and the law could not be read to require members to give advance notice.²⁰²¹ DHS later imposed a seven-day notice requirement on congressional visits; on March 2, 2026, Judge Jia M. Cobb blocked the revised version as likely contrary to law, finding that the delay deprived the lawmakers who sued of timely oversight, and declined a broader order covering future notice policies.²²²³²⁴ DHS invoked safety and said the revised policy would use separate One Big Beautiful Bill Act funds. Cobb agreed that Section 527 did not itself restrict that appropriation or impose a general ban on notice policies. But she found the policy likely unlawful because DHS used restricted funds to create it and could not shift the relevant expenses to the other appropriation; DHS also supplied no concrete examples of safety problems from unannounced congressional visits.²²²³

A guard also admitted Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who lacked the members' statutory authority; an agent later directed him outside the security gate.¹⁸⁶ Baraka was in the unsecured public parking area when agents approached to arrest him, after the special agent in charge announced that the deputy attorney general had authorized the arrest.¹⁸⁶ The representatives, already inside the secured premises, went back out; a crowd formed around Baraka, and agents pushed through it to apprehend him.⁶ All three representatives then reentered and completed their inspection the same day.⁶

A DHS release that day said members of Congress and protesters had "stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility."²⁵ The government later conceded in court that the members entered lawfully and conducted a legislative inspection.¹⁸⁶

The government charged Baraka with trespassing.²⁶¹⁸ On May 21, 12 days after the arrest, prosecutors dropped the charge, which was dismissed with prejudice.²⁷²⁶ Baraka's later civil complaint reproduces Magistrate Judge Andre Espinosa's rebuke: "An arrest, particularly of a public figure, is not a preliminary investigative tool."²⁶ Espinosa said the apparent rush and embarrassing retraction of charges suggested a failure to investigate adequately, gather facts carefully and consider the consequences before exercising prosecutorial power.²⁶

Baraka sued over the arrest and public statements about it.²⁶ He alleged that Alina Habba, then the interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, threatened to charge him with resisting arrest unless he gave up his right to sue for attorneys' fees, and that he refused.²⁶²⁸ On September 4, 2026, Judge Brian R. Martinotti dismissed all four counts without prejudice: the government won on whether a damages remedy was available, and the dismissal left the truth of Baraka's allegations undecided.²⁸

McIver Lost on Two Counts and Won Further Review of the Third

A grand jury indicted McIver, who served on the House Committee on Homeland Security, on June 10, 2025, on three counts of forcibly assaulting, resisting or interfering with federal officers.¹⁹¹⁸⁶ The indictment alleged that she slammed her forearm into one agent and tried to restrain him during Baraka's arrest, then struck a second officer while returning through the gate.¹⁹⁶ An indictment establishes probable cause, not guilt.¹⁹²⁹⁶

The government's defense is that authorized oversight did not entitle her to physically interfere with agents arresting Baraka.¹⁸⁶ Judge Jamel K. Semper, a Joe Biden nominee, denied her motions to dismiss.³⁰¹⁸³¹ He found from video that McIver initiated contact with the second officer, who was not facing her or purposely impeding her; the contact lasted two to three seconds, and a different officer then forcefully shoved her as she tried to lawfully reenter.³¹

Semper also rejected McIver's claims that she was being selectively or vindictively prosecuted.¹⁸ He relied on the fact that the other two representatives were not charged: he found that they advocated for Baraka but did not physically contest his arrest.¹⁸ Asked whether he directed the prosecution, Trump denied doing so, said the days of woke were over, and said he did not know who she was; Semper found that this and the other cited statements failed to establish the personal animus needed for her vindictive-prosecution claim.¹⁸

On August 26, 2026, the Third Circuit allowed two counts to proceed, holding that those charges did not require McIver to answer for protected legislative acts.⁶ It sent the third back for the district court to examine whether the charge includes protected legislative acts and can stand after those are excluded.⁶

The court also rejected McIver's request to extend the presidential-immunity reasoning of Trump v. United States beyond Congress's Speech or Debate protection.⁶

Judge Thomas Ambro dissented in part: he would have allowed McIver to investigate whether DHS's hostility drove the prosecution, and he called the department's published accounts falsehoods.⁶ The government, he noted, had identified no other prosecution under the same statute for comparably minimal physical contact.⁶ He considered McIver less culpable than January 6 defendants whose pending charges were dismissed under Trump's directive: she was unarmed, lawfully present, had no criminal record and caused no injury.⁶ Semper had rejected those comparisons, and the appellate majority dismissed the appeal on selective and vindictive prosecution for lack of jurisdiction without deciding its merits.¹⁸⁶

On October 9, McIver's office announced that she and her lawyers had filed a request for the full Third Circuit to rehear the case.³²

Padilla Was Forced Out and Handcuffed

On June 9, 2025, a reporter asked Trump about California Governor Gavin Newsom's public dare to border czar Tom Homan to arrest him, and Trump answered: "I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great."⁹ Three days later, federal officers removed Senator Alex Padilla from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's Los Angeles press conference and handcuffed him.⁷³³

In his June 17 Senate account, Padilla said he asked to attend, an FBI agent and a National Guard member escorted him into the press conference, and they stood beside him while he listened.⁷ He said Noem described federal law enforcement and military presence as a means to liberate Los Angeles from its elected governor and mayor.⁷ After he tried to ask a question, he said, officers physically forced him out while he identified himself as a senator.⁷ They put him on the ground, he said, first on his knees and then flat on his chest, handcuffed him and marched him down a hallway.⁷ He said his repeated requests for an explanation went unanswered.⁷

DHS said in a statement that Padilla had not identified himself, lacked a Senate security pin, lunged toward Noem, and ignored commands to move back; Secret Service personnel, it said, thought he was an attacker and acted appropriately.³³ It also said Noem met him for 15 minutes afterward.³³ The statement did not dispute the handcuffing.³³⁷

Five days after the press conference, on June 17, federal immigration agents arrested New York City Comptroller Brad Lander at 26 Federal Plaza while, he said in later City Council testimony, he was accompanying an asylum seeker out of immigration court; DHS said it arrested him for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.³⁴³⁵³⁶ Governor Kathy Hochul's office documented his release that same day, and in its transcript she said that to her knowledge there were no charges.³⁵

Criminal Standards Do Not Settle the Impeachment Question

Elected office exempts no one from criminal law, and Congress's Speech or Debate protection covers legislative work rather than everything a member does.³⁷³⁸³⁹ The Supreme Court generally requires someone seeking damages for retaliatory arrest or prosecution to show that officials lacked probable cause, with limited exceptions to the arrest rule.⁴⁰⁴¹²⁹

Impeachment concerns a different question: serious abuse of public office.⁴²⁴³ In 1974 the House Judiciary Committee adopted, 28 to 10, a second Nixon impeachment article charging misuse of executive agencies against constitutional rights; the full House never voted on it because Nixon resigned.⁴⁴⁴⁵ The committee's impeachment-inquiry staff said that not all presidential misconduct qualifies and that the offenses must be substantial.⁴³

There is also an adverse precedent for relying on words alone: the House's 1868 Article X against Andrew Johnson concerned his attacks on Congress, and the Senate never voted on it.⁴⁶⁴³ Trump's words matter here not as criticism of Congress but because they publicly back punishment and sit beside actual exercises of executive power.²³⁴⁶

The Charge Is Abuse of Executive Power

The finding of likely retaliation concerns Kelly's case alone, but the other encounters warrant scrutiny alongside it: Baraka's charge was dropped, McIver's prosecution survived in substantial part, Padilla was restrained, and Lander was arrested and released.^1276735

The charge is abuse of executive power against people who challenge and oversee the executive.³¹²⁰²³ Its clearest instance is retaliation: Hegseth censured a sitting senator and threatened his retired pay over speech that Leon found protected, after Trump publicly demanded punishment of the lawmakers.¹³² Trump's public backing and his administration's conduct warrant impeachment scrutiny because government powers used against elected critics can injure both the officials and the public's ability to hear criticism and obtain oversight.²¹²³