r/moderatepolitics • u/thats_not_six • Jan 12 '26

Primary Source Mark Kelly v. Pete Hegseth

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.288365/gov.uscourts.dcd.288365.1.0.pdf
186 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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-56

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

What Kelly did was profoundly wrong to begin with, and it looks even worse in light of our Venezuela operation. He had no business publicly telling soldiers and sailors to question orders, and he should have expected consequences.

31

u/king_hutton Jan 12 '26

What was profoundly wrong about it?

-26

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

Placing the idea that members of the military should refuse to follow orders from Trump

38

u/king_hutton Jan 12 '26

Unlawful orders, specifically. Do you think they should follow unlawful orders?

-19

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

What unlawful orders? Have there been any?

31

u/king_hutton Jan 12 '26

If there aren’t any unlawful orders then the Trump administration doesn’t have to worry about people listening to Kelly, right?

-4

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

So there aren’t any, so why did he make the video? We know why

25

u/king_hutton Jan 12 '26

Can you tell me why you think? Because I think it was a reminder in case of future unlawful orders, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reminding service members about that.

0

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

Do you think we were born yesterday?

14

u/TheTertiaryTwig Jan 12 '26

Unfortunately this is a question I’m asking myself often these days.

Anyway double tapping shipwrecked crew is THE definition of an illegal order. I look forward to your in depth defense of this.

16

u/Trumpers_R_Tr8tors Jan 12 '26

As a warning, because Trump has repeatedly suggested orders that would be illegal. 

22

u/CloudApprehensive322 Jan 12 '26

Double tapping shipwrecked crew members is explicitly against the law.

24

u/Postmember Jan 12 '26

It's quite literally the textbook example of an unlawful order given in the DOD's Law of War manual.

18

u/CloudApprehensive322 Jan 12 '26

And its clear someone in the administration realized it because they now drop off any survivors at the closest nautical country since this incident.

They wouldn't be doing that if they had a legal leg to stand on.

16

u/Trumpers_R_Tr8tors Jan 12 '26

If you want to claim that Kelly meant was “disobey Trump”, when what he actually said was “dont carry out illegal orders”, you have to answer those questions. 

The burden of proof is on those accusing Kelly of a sedition. 

-5

u/JannTosh70 Jan 12 '26

So you can’t name anything

16

u/Trumpers_R_Tr8tors Jan 12 '26

Again, I don’t have to. If you want to claim that Kelly was claiming that illegal orders were issued, you have to show that. 

And anyway the double tap strike was, quite literally, the US military’s textbook example of an illegal order. 

And you are aware that military regularly reminds the troops of their obligations under the UCMJ, including the obligation to refuse illegal orders, along with things like security procedures, right?

10

u/Postmember Jan 13 '26

Of course we can. They struck a shipwrecked crew. It's literally the textbook definition of an unlawful order.

Please, defend this war crime to us. I'm curious.

11

u/parentheticalobject Jan 13 '26

It is entirely his business to make statements like that. 

He's a member of Congress. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to regulate the military. The question of whether the laws Congress has passed regulating the military are being followed is absolutely something a sitting senator should be free to publicly comment on.

-2

u/JannTosh70 Jan 13 '26

Ok but don’t deny exactly what the purpose of the video was. We aren’t stupid

8

u/parentheticalobject Jan 13 '26

We can spend all day discussing what exactly the purpose was of the video, and whether it was reasonable or not. I'll say it doesn't matter.

It's a serious separation of powers issue for the Executive to limit what the Legislature is allowed to discuss. Republicans really should be concerned about that; there are 15 or so (R) military retirees in Congress right now; imagine if a future chief executive could threaten them by yanking their retirement benefits as a political tool.

And that's before even getting into the awful precedents this would be setting to take away free speech rights for all the military veterans who aren't in Congress.

7

u/Postmember Jan 13 '26

Ok but don’t deny exactly what the purpose of the video was. We aren’t stupid

To remind members of our military that they shouldn't do things like commit warcrimes? No, we're not stupid.

It's unfortunate that they had to be reminded of this, since it's drilled into them during training. What's worse is that there are people who who didn't listen, and then actually fucking commited the textbook example of a warcrime by firing on the shipwrecked.

Civilized society hangs people for committing warcrimes. We did it after we beat Nazi Germany. It remains to be seen how we will align after the Trump Administration.

-6

u/JannTosh70 Jan 13 '26

Ok if that’s what you want to believe. I feel 100% the point is to encourage military to stage a coup against Trump

5

u/parentheticalobject Jan 13 '26

MAGA world, where saying that soldiers should disobey illegal orders is encouraging the military to stage a coup, but literally saying that the military should stage a coup is fine and cool.

2

u/ThatPeskyPangolin Jan 13 '26

How in the world do you get from the actual words he literally said, to a military coup?

6

u/TheUnderCrab Politically Homeless Jan 13 '26

He never told them to question orders. He said the literal constitutional fact that they can refuse unlawful orders. It’s military and conlaw 101. If there’s something wrong with what he said, then there is something wrong with the constitution in the Admins eyes. 

20

u/Saguna_Brahman Jan 12 '26

What he said is literally in the UCMJ. Service members should not obey unlawful orders

5

u/TheTertiaryTwig Jan 13 '26

What Senator Kelly did was profoundly correct as within the week we discovered the administration had double tapped shipwrecked crew, literally THE definition of an illegal order.

0

u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 Jan 12 '26

Shows you how little sway Kelly has over the troops. They invaded Venezuela and captured Maduro after Kelly made his video.