Putin on the Potomac: A Grand Jury Says 'Nyet'

Jeff Robbins on Feb 17, 2026

Time was when throwing your political opponents into prison on trumped-up charges was the deplorable domain of despots over whom we claimed moral superiority: Saddam Hussein or the Iranian mullahs, say. Or pick your Soviet premier. Or Vladimir Putin.

Those were the good old days.

Now it's us.

But for the smarts and guts of a small group of Americans last week, we'd have spent a lot of time staring at some pretty jarring video: that of six U.S. Senators and Congressmen, Democrats all, arrested, perp-walked and arraigned by the President Donald Trump Justice Department on orders of the president as punishment for correctly stating the law of the land.

Let that, as the expression goes, sink in.

Back in the Land of the Rule of Law, it is established not only that members of the U.S. military have the right to disobey orders that violate the law, but they are obliged to do so. The Uniform Code of Military Justice provides that U.S. service members have an affirmative duty to disobey illegal orders, defined as those that call for actions that violate the Constitution, U.S. law or international law. The Defense Department's Law of War Manual says the same.

So, when last November, six members of Congress made a video simply restating the law, it was more than ironic that the only American president to be convicted of a felony -- actually, 34 felonies, but who's counting? -- claimed that by reciting the law, they were violating it. And not just that, but committing "treason."

No matter that the lawmakers had all served their country in the military or our intelligence services. The convicted felon who invoked phony "bone spurs" to avoid serving in Vietnam -- bone spurs that seem to have magically disappeared from his medical records contemporaneously with the end of the Vietnam War -- took to social media to call for the lawmaker-veterans to be put to death. "SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH," posted the ex-con draft dodger. "Each of these traitors to our country should be ARRESTED and PUT ON TRIAL."

Here are the "traitors," who joined our armed services while some people were hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein: Sen. Mark Kelly, Navy combat veteran. Sen. Elise Slotkin, CIA analyst, who served multiple tours in Iraq. Congressman Jason Crow, Army Ranger and combat veteran. Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander, Navy reservist. Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, Air Force officer. Congressman Chris Deluzio, Navy.

Here was their video to the men and women of our armed services.

"Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate our Constitution."

Pretty straightforward. Pretty much plain vanilla.

If Donald Trump thought that reciting the law was "seditious," he made an odd selection for Defense Secretary. That selection, Pete Hegseth, repeatedly said precisely what the six lawmakers said back when he was a Fox News commentator -- and Barack Obama was president. "You're not just gonna follow that order if it's unlawful," he proclaimed in 2016. "The military's not gonna follow illegal orders."

But that was when Hegseth was just a telegenic bro who hit the sauce too much.

Last week, following Trump's orders, Attorney General Pam Bondi asked a federal grand jury to indict the six Democratic lawmakers for seditious conspiracy on the basis of that video. It's often noted that prosecutors dominate grand juries so completely and grand juries comply so automatically with prosecutors' requests that they indict people that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if requested. The indictment that Donald Trump ordered up against six political adversaries may have been a sandwich, but what was between the two slices of bread wasn't ham.

The grand jury said no.

It was a simple, yet striking, rebuff by ordinary Americans to what is now appropriately called a regime rather than an administration, increasingly indistinguishable from the tyrants elsewhere around the world against whom we have historically -- and properly -- railed.

And here's the thing: Even with Donald Trump's approval rating down to 36%, that still leaves tens of Americans who are fine with this.

Simply put: Shame on us.

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Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.