U.S. Rep. Jason Crow said Wednesday that “there will be costs” for the federal officials who unsuccessfully tried to indict him and five other Democratic legislators, hours after Crow’s lawyer warned prosecutors against further attempts to charge the lawmakers.
“We are taking names, we are making lists,” Crow said in an interview.
Crow, who represents an Aurora-centered district in Congress, said he had still not received any information from the Department of Justice or the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. He learned through news reports Tuesday night that a grand jury had rejected federal prosecutors’ attempt to charge him and his colleagues over a video the lawmakers released to U.S. troops last year.
In the November video, the Democrats — all of whom served in the military or intelligence services — told military members to follow existing protocol and not obey commands that would violate the law.
It’s unclear what charges prosecutors sought to bring against the lawmakers. Crow said he was “appalled” when he saw the news reports, and he and three of the other lawmakers targeted in the probe accused the Trump administration Wednesday of weaponizing the Justice Department against the president’s political enemies.
“But that is the moment that we are in,” Crow told The Denver Post. “And I think every American is starting to see that, and the tide is turning.”
He said he wasn’t aware of any similar attempts to indict members of Congress for political speech.
The Justice Department had opened an investigation into the lawmakers’ comments, and Crow said he was contacted by the FBI and the department late last year for an interview. He has not been interviewed.
After the video’s release, President Donald Trump accused the lawmakers of sedition that was “punishable by death,” and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth censured Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former Navy pilot and astronaut, for his role in the video. Hegseth has also sought to demote Kelly from his retired rank of captain.
(Watch on YouTube.)
On Wednesday, Crow’s lawyer sent a letter to Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., instructing her to preserve records from the investigation into the lawmakers. The attorney, Abbe David Lowell, also warned Pirro that “further attempts to pursue these baseless allegations would be actionable.”
“The baseless and absurd allegations by Donald Trump, followed by your carrying out of the president’s political retribution campaign, has already gone too far and are evidence of yet another abuse of power directed to those who dare speak out and criticize this Administration,” Lowell wrote.
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Bloomberg reported that a dance photographer, who worked for Pirro when she was a county prosecutor in the 1990s, was one of the federal prosecutors who’d sought to secure the indictment. He joined the office after a mass exodus of staff, according to Bloomberg.
At a news conference earlier Wednesday, Crow and the three other participating lawmakers — U.S. Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire — declined to say what next steps they planned to take or on what timeline.
“Actually, that’s a ball that’s in the Trump administration’s court,” Crow said. “We’ve been very clear about that position, and it needs to stop. If it doesn’t stop, then we’ll take all necessary options.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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