WASHINGTON — Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly could face a demotion and reduction in retirement pay from the military after an official censure from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in response to a video from the Democratic senator last year encouraging U.S. service members not to follow illegal orders.
Hegseth announced on Monday that he formally issued the censure against Kelly as well as official proceedings to downgrade his retired rank and pay grade. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan will review Kelly’s status and must provide a recommendation to the Defense Department within the next 45 days.
“As a retired Navy Captain who is still receiving a military pension, Captain Kelly knows he is still accountable to military justice,” Hegseth wrote. “And the Department of War — and the American people — expect justice.”
A military censure typically includes a letter formally expressing strong disapproval of a service member’s conduct that is placed into his or her official file. For Kelly, the censure will “ensure” the review takes place to determine his rank and pay.
Kelly will have 30 days to appeal Hegseth’s order.
Kelly pushed back against the censure in a statement on Monday, decrying the move as Hegseth “send(ing) the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way.”
“It’s outrageous and it is wrong,” he added. “There is nothing more un-American than that.”
Kelly said he would fight the demotion efforts as part of a broader effort to “send a message back that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump don’t get to decide what Americans in this country get to say about their government.”
The review comes in direct response to Kelly’s public statements from June through December of last year during which Hegseth accuses the Democratic senator of characterizing “lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders.”
Among the most well known of those instances was when Kelly, along with five other lawmakers who previously served in the military, released a video on Nov. 18 encouraging service members and those in the U.S. intelligence community not to follow orders that violate the law — even if they come from their superiors or directly from the Trump administration.
Kelly and the other Democrats who made the video did not point to a specific illegal order they believe was given by the president. Critics of the video said they worried it could lead to disarray and confusion among service members.
Before the video was released, Kelly had offered a similar sentiment in an interview with McKay Coppins on the “Deseret Voices” podcast, during which he reiterated that military members and law enforcement officials — in this specific case, ICE agents — don’t “have to follow unlawful orders.”
“Do the job in a respectful way and follow the law,” Kelly said. “That’s true for the military. I think it’s true for federal law enforcement too. Nobody can tell you to break the law. You can’t be told to violate people’s constitutional rights. People have to stand up and say, no, I’m not going to do that.”
President Donald Trump decried the Democratic lawmakers for the video, calling them “traitors” who “should be arrested and put on trial.” In one social media post, Trump said “seditious behavior” is “punishable by DEATH!”
Kelly retired as a captain in the U.S. Navy, and he has served in a variety of positions such as Navy pilot, combat veteran and NASA astronaut.