(AFP) – US Democratic lawmakers accused Donald Trump on Tuesday of using the FBI to “intimidate” members of Congress and said the law enforcement agency had requested interviews with them following their criticism of the president. The legislators were among six who this month called on military and intelligence personnel to refuse any “illegal orders” by Trump, who labeled them “traitors.”
“President Trump is using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass Members of Congress,” said a statement released by Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan, who are all Democratic members of the House of Representatives. “Yesterday, the FBI contacted the House and Senate Sergeants at Arms requesting interviews,” they said. “No amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution.”
The FBI in an email declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The US military said on Monday it was weighing a court-martial against Democratic senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly, who had also appeared in the video released this month which urged troops to refuse unlawful orders. Kelly — a decorated Navy combat pilot and former astronaut who commanded the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s final flight — fired back that he would not be intimidated or “silenced by bullies.”
Elissa Slotkin, another senator who appeared in the video, said in a post on X on Tuesday that the FBI “appeared to open an inquiry into me in response to a video President Trump did not like.” “The President directing the FBI to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place,” she said.
The six Democrats who released the video did not specify which orders they meant, but Trump has ordered the National Guard into multiple US cities — often against local objections — to curb what he calls rampant unrest. Overseas, Trump has ordered strikes on alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean that killed more than 80 people and which experts say are illegal. Trump initially accused the group of “seditious behavior, punishable by death.” Over the weekend, he wrote in an all-caps social media rant that the “traitors” who told troops to disobey him “should be in jail.”
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