Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) joins Nicolle Wallace on MS NOW’s “Deadline White House” with reaction to the failed indictment of her, by the Justice Department after she and her fellow Democratic lawmakers made a video advocating for service members to not follow illegal orders.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D), MICHIGAN:  Some of you know that I recently lost my father a couple of weeks ago.  And my father taught me two things.  He taught me right from wrong, and he taught me to love this country.  Senator Kelly and I have both served our country.  We have risked our lives for our country.  This country has given me everything.  So if we have to sit here and take physical intimidation and legal intimidation to uphold the country we love, we will happily do that.   (END VIDEO CLIP) NICOLLE WALLACE, HOST:  Wow.  Joining us now, Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.  She’s a member of the Armed Services Committee, one of the lawmakers that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice tried and failed to indict yesterday over a video message simply advising the men and women of the military to reject illegal orders.   Thank you for being here.   SLOTKIN:  Sure.  Happy to be here.   WALLACE:  You got me with this, that the country has given you everything and that you doing your job includes telling the men and women of the military that they must not follow an illegal order.  Do you have any better understanding today than you did when you made the video, or the last time we talked as to why that was so triggering for Donald Trump to say those things?   SLOTKIN:  No, I mean, it was a 90-second video where we were restating current law.  And he went high and right, as we’d say at the Pentagon, and tweeted about us over a dozen times that we should be investigated, arrested, and ultimately hanged.  And part of what happened yesterday was his people, you know, his political folks following up on what he said.  You know, we were investigated.  And then they tried to get a criminal indictment against us yesterday, trying to get us arrested.   So, you know, the heroes of yesterday were these 20 anonymous grand jury members.  I don’t know who they are.  They were picked at random.  And they taught us more about just basic democracy and rule of law than the president of the United States and the attorney general.  So, you know, it’s a positive thing the way it came out, but it should have never happened.   WALLACE:  Do you worry that he’ll take the case against the six of you to other jurisdictions and try to achieve an indictment?   SLOTKIN:  Yeah, I mean, look, we — we knew doing a press conference, we knew pushing back on this — you know, the voluntary inquiry, we knew that going on offense could easily piss him off and piss them off and — and result in more legal action.  But the truth is, by sitting on our hands and doing nothing, we also were incurring risk, right?  That the investigations kept coming when we were quiet.  So if it’s going to be bad when you’re quiet, you might as well go on offense and have this conversation publicly.   And to me, I just — I think that, you know, look, I’m a sitting senator.  I have — you know, I could create a legal defense fund.  I could — I could go on TV shows like this.  The average person, you know, sitting home in Michigan can’t do that.  You know, if the president comes for a small business owner or a community leader or a mom who goes viral on TikTok, you know, that legal intimidation and the threat of having to get a lawyer and pay for that lawyer, and the physical intimidation when his followers follow what he says and threaten you and — and threaten your parents, that is enough to keep a lot of people quiet.  And that’s the point.   The intimidation is the point, physical intimidation and legal intimidation so that other people watch this episode and say, not for me, I’m just not going to get involved, I’m not going to push back on Trump.  So I think certainly, for me, I was more than happy to take this on and to do it on behalf of just basic things like the rule of law.   WALLACE:  Do you have information that suggests men and women are receiving illegal orders?   SLOTKIN:  So certainly — certainly for me, the reason why I organized the video in the fall was because we were getting lots of folks, veterans, but also people in uniform, both in active duty and National Guard, who were like, I’m really worried that I’m going to be asked to do something that is illegal, or, I’m hearing that that’s happening, or, I’m not sure and I went to, you know, my JAG officer and I tried to be sure that, like, what I was being asked to do was legal.   And certainly if you look at what’s going on in places like Minneapolis right now, that’s not uniformed military, but it certainly could be.  The president was sending National Guard all over the country.  And that was the fear was that you would have uniformed military in our city streets, asked to do something against American citizens.   And I know the military doesn’t want to be doing that.  They’re not trained for that.  So we were certainly hearing a chorus of voices, both in the United States, but also — also folks in, you know — you know, in the Caribbean and the Pacific.  So it was a chorus of voices.  

RealClearPolitics Videos