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Bulwark Takes

Sen. Kelly: Trump Wants Me in Jail for Telling the Truth

Bulwark Takes

The Bulwark

News, Society & Culture, Politics, News Commentary

4.71.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sen. Mark Kelly joins Sam Stein to explain just how close the country came to a constitutional crisis. He discusses the grand jury’s rejection, the chilling effect on retired service members, and why he believes this fight is far from over—including what Mike Johnson and Republican leaders are (and aren’t) doing about it.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bork, and I am joined by Senator Mark

0:04.1

Kelly of Arizona. We are fresh off breaking news, relatively breaking news, that the Trump

0:10.2

Justice Department tried and failed to indict him and five other sitting Democratic lawmakers

0:14.5

for the temerity of putting out a video that said you don't have to follow on lawful orders,

0:20.4

which is true.

0:21.7

Senator, we're a bit removed from that now.

0:24.0

I saw you on the shows yesterday.

0:26.2

I'm just sort of curious, first things first, when did you actually find out that they

0:31.0

tried to indict you?

0:32.1

They tried.

0:33.1

So they impaneled a grand jury a couple days ago.

0:36.9

You know, we heard that they were doing this.

0:39.1

They don't actually notify you.

0:40.5

That's not the process.

0:42.3

And then we heard they didn't have the votes.

0:44.7

We later found out just NBC reported they didn't get any votes to indict us.

0:49.5

It's good to know that just some regular U.S. citizens, you know, here I presume in Washington, D.C.,

0:56.7

where they tried to do this, understand the Constitution, better than the president, better than

1:02.4

Pam Bondi, or Janine Piro, the D.C. U.S. attorney. Hey, they're trying to take away the First

1:09.6

Amendment, those rights of free speech,

1:13.2

freedom of the press from all Americans, 350 million of us. And for me, as a retired service member,

1:21.5

they're going after me through the Defense Department to try to demote me and take away my rank for

...

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