It is my job, as a United States Senator, to conduct oversight on the executive branch.

As part of that oversight, I attended a classified briefing with Pete Hegseth and others on the U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean.

I won’t get into the details, but I came prepared with substantial and serious questions. I asked him specific things about this military operation, and instead of answering he started lecturing me about lawful and unlawful orders.

Yeah, really.

Pete didn’t want to answer my questions because he doesn’t have good answers. He’s unqualified and out of his depth. What he’d rather do is try and remind me that he’s directed the Pentagon to investigate me for repeating something every servicemember learns in training: you have to refuse illegal orders.

And it’s worth noting he’s on tape publicly saying the same thing. On Fox News. About Donald Trump. Just 9 years ago.

It would be laughable if this wasn’t so serious. He was trying to intimidate me into silence — even in a classified briefing, with no cameras to perform for.

Not gonna work.

I was elected to this job twice, first in 2020 and again in 2022. The people of Arizona sent me to Washington to represent them, to be their voice in government.

Nobody is going to stop me from doing that job, especially not somebody like Pete Hegseth.

Thanks,

Mark

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Mark Kelly was a Captain in the U.S. Navy and astronaut. Use of his military rank, job titles and photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or Department of Defense and reference to NASA does not imply endorsement by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.