The Hill: Rep. Crow on grand jury’s refusal to indict six Democrats: ‘They always will fail’
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) on Wednesday applauded a grand jury’s decision not to indict him and five other Democratic lawmakers over their participation in a controversial video last year, arguing that the Department of Justice “failed, and they will always fail.”
The failed federal indictment was pursued by the office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro. The lawmakers featured in the video – Sens. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.) and Reps. Maggie Goodlander (N.H.), Chrissy Houlahan (Pa.) Chris Deluzio (Pa.) and Crow – had called on military service members and intelligence community personnel to defy “illegal orders.”
Their joint statement came after the Trump administration carried out deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean. President Trump had immediately blasted the lawmakers, calling the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
“Yesterday, the Trump Department of Justice tried and failed to indict us on criminal charges based on a video that we filmed last year simply reminding our fellow service members to follow the law and the Constitution. They failed, and they will always fail,” Crow said during a press conference, alongside Goodlander, Deluzio and Houlahan.
He added that Trump was trying to send a message that “if you dare step out of line, if you dare dissent and speak up and push back against his agenda, that you will be crushed, that the consequences of dissent will be too high for Americans to bear.”
“But they failed in sending that message, too. Instead, what they have done is awakened the courage, the tenacity and the resilience of the American people who are stepping up to retake their country and their democracy. The tide is turning,” Crow added.
Prosecutors had failed to meet a low bar of “probable cause” to convince a majority of the grand jury to secure an indictment against the six Democrats.
“It’s not about me, it’s not about us. This is a victory for the Constitution of the United States, and it’s a victory for every American who refuses to be intimidated into silence,” Houlahan said.
Deluzio echoed those sentiments, arguing that, “I’m not going to be intimidated. No one up here is going to be intimidated. The American people should not be intimidated.”
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), however, had argued that the six Democrats should have been indicted.
“I think that anytime you’re obstructing law enforcement and getting in the way of these sensitive operations, it’s a very serious thing, and it probably is a crime. And, yeah, they probably should be indicted,” he told reporters.
Crow’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent a letter to Pirro on Feb. 11 demanding that she take no further action against Crow, and also put her and others deciding to pursue further charges “on notice” of the possible legal ramifications, according to Politico.
“What’s perhaps most surprising is not that your effort to secure a grand jury indictment failed, but that you even tried. Americans are paying attention to your gross abuses of power and demanding accountability,” Lowell wrote in the letter.
Ellen Mitchell and Sarah Davis contributed.