分析：斯蒂芬·科林森，2小时前发布，2026年2月12日，美国东部时间凌晨12:00
我们对唐纳德·特朗普有三点了解：
他渴望复仇；他会为了实施复仇而突破总统权力的极限；并且在失败后绝不会放弃。
难怪尽管一个大陪审团拒绝起诉六位民主党议员——他们曾警告军人不要服从非法命令——但这六位议员（均为军方和情报界老兵）仍在为即将发生的事情做准备。
“我对他们无所不用其极。唐纳德·特朗普很难从事情中走出来，他不喜欢坏消息，而且他的自我意识非常强。”其中一位议员、亚利桑那州参议员马克·凯利周三表示。
另一位议员，密歇根州参议员艾利萨·斯洛特金，周三被美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）的安德森·库珀问及是否认为政府可能会再次试图起诉她。她回答道：“我不会感到惊讶。”
曾在伊拉克和阿富汗服役的前陆军游骑兵和伞兵、众议员杰森·克劳已发起反击，警告司法部停止报复行动，否则将采取法律行动。“我们正在记录名单，我们正在创建清单，”他周三告诉记者。
这场对峙始于议员们向军人发出的警告，该警告以一段社交媒体视频的形式呈现，这一视频激怒了特朗普。他抨击这六位议员是“叛徒”，犯有“最高级别的煽动叛乱罪”，甚至可能应被判处死刑。国防部长彼得·赫格塞支持他的报复行动，已着手降低凯利的最后军衔（上尉）并削减其退休金。
但周二有消息称，华盛顿的联邦检察官未能说服大陪审团起诉这些议员。这一尝试是特朗普的威权倾向和将司法部武器化的最新公然例证。
周三，在国会山，司法部与总统的个人和政治目标之间的协同效应也显现出来：司法部长帕姆·邦迪在抨击民主党人时称特朗普为“美国历史上最伟大的总统”。
特朗普毫不掩饰自己对复仇的热衷，也不会让任何攻击无回应。
“如果你攻击我，我就会反击你。”他在2023年8月于Truth Social（特朗普的社交平台）上写道，这一定义了他的人生信条——作为总统，他再次拥有广泛权力来实施报复。2024年，他还告诉脱口秀主持人菲尔·麦格劳博士：“有时候，复仇是合理的。”
司法部未能获得起诉是不寻常的，因为提起诉讼的门槛相当低。但这也是一个非凡的宪法时刻。当总统直接被公民挫败，这是共和制度得到验证的罕见时刻。如果特朗普的强人本能在未来三年内受到挑战，可能需要更多公民的微小行动。
“非凡之处在于，一群普通的美国公民——一个大陪审团，站出来维护法治，对抗这种对权力和纳税人资金的肆无忌惮的滥用。”另一位民主党议员、前美国海军预备役情报官员玛吉·古德兰周三告诉CNN的卡西·亨特。
“这是宪法的胜利，”古德兰说。
一段有争议的视频
许多美国人可能会质疑这六位国会议员发布此类视频的动机，因为这无疑会煽动特朗普。议员们轮流宣读声明，警告特朗普的行为威胁到宪法。凯利，前海军航空母舰飞行员和航天飞机宇航员，告诉军人“我们的法律很明确”，并补充道“你可以拒绝非法命令”。
对一些人来说，这段视频代表了将军方卷入竞选式噱头的不明智决定。另一些人则担心，这一视频给本就与特朗普政府走钢丝的军官们带来了新的政治复杂性。这段视频发布之际，美国正在太平洋和加勒比海地区对所谓的毒贩进行一系列打击，这些打击的法律和宪法依据备受质疑。
然而，支持这些议员的人认为，政府的回应是荒谬的，因为他们只是提醒军官们宪法的要求——并行使每个美国人都享有的言论自由权利。对反对总统的议员提起成功的诉讼，似乎将国会这一独立分支的批评视为非法，这将对民主造成毁灭性打击。
凯利已采取法律行动，指控五角大楼侵犯了他的第一修正案权利。美国联邦地区高级法官理查德·利昂似乎同情凯利的观点，即国会中的退休军人如果不能公开反对五角大楼，将阻碍其工作。
“你的立场是他们不应该就军事问题发表意见吗？”利昂在本月的听证会上问政府法律顾问，“那他们应该如何履行职责？”
但这是一个不试图隐藏对国会及其监督角色蔑视的白宫。它蔑视任何形式的异议。并且它已重塑司法系统以迎合特朗普的要求，打破了司法部与椭圆形办公室之间传统上应存在的壁垒。
“你把人民的司法部变成了特朗普的复仇工具，”众议院司法委员会高级民主党人、马里兰州众议员杰米·拉斯金周三对邦迪说，“特朗普像点披萨一样下令起诉，而你每次都照做。”
对这六位民主党议员的未遂起诉也引发了一个更黑暗的可能性——特朗普的第二任期检察官宁愿提出无望的案件，也不愿让要求报复的总统失望。
如果成功，这不仅会传递一个信息：国会议员可以被总统压制，还会让普通公民更加无助。
但是，邦迪周三辩称，司法部已被拜登政府武器化来对付特朗普，她提到了司法部起诉特朗普涉嫌2021年选举干预以及在其佛罗里达家中保留机密文件的案件，可能还涉及特朗普第一任期的俄罗斯调查。
“我信任我们的司法系统”
这六位民主党议员（还包括宾夕法尼亚州的克里斯西·豪拉汉和克里斯·德卢齐奥）对共和党同事未能捍卫他们和他们的分支政府感到愤怒。
周二，众议院议长迈克·约翰逊表示，这些议员“可能应该被起诉”。周三，他略微缓和了立场，但仍批评这段视频：“他们的行为是非常危险的策略。应该让他们入狱吗？希望不会。但我们需要指出这是极其不当的。”
南达科他州共和党人、参议院多数党领袖约翰·图恩也不喜欢这段视频，但他反对起诉：“我不会用这种方式回应。”他说，“我信任我们的司法系统，这是他们得出的结论。在我看来，这基本上可以平息此事。”
政府可能不会表现出类似的接受态度。例如，去年12月，弗吉尼亚州的一个大陪审团拒绝起诉另一位特朗普的对手——纽约州总检察长莱蒂西亚·詹姆斯，指控其犯有抵押贷款欺诈罪。一周后，联邦检察官再次尝试，但结果相同。
但特朗普的复仇名单还在不断扩大。
另一案件中，针对特朗普第一任期解雇的前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米的调查被法官驳回，理由是检察官（前白宫助手林赛·哈利根）的任命非法。
被特朗普视为敌人的许多人正在接受调查，包括前特别顾问杰克·史密斯和加利福尼亚州参议员亚当·希夫。周三，众议院司法委员会共和党人询问邦迪是否会起诉前中情局局长、现任特朗普批评者约翰·布伦南。司法部长表示，她已收到司法委员会对布伦南的调查请求，但无法讨论正在进行的案件。然而，她补充道：“没有人凌驾于法律之上。”
克劳没有等待。他的律师阿比·洛厄尔致信美国检察官吉娜·皮罗，威胁称如果再次试图起诉其当事人，将采取法律行动。
“唐纳德·特朗普提出的无根据且荒谬的指控，以及你执行总统政治报复运动的行为，已经走得太远了，这是针对那些敢于发声和批评本政府的人的又一次权力滥用的证据。”洛厄尔写道。
克劳则更为直接：
“每个美国人都应该非常愤怒，因为他们正在用纳税人的钱——这些钱是公众托付给司法部的——来对付政治对手，将他们的司法系统武器化。”克劳告诉记者。
How Trump failed in his latest bid to weaponize justice
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, 2 hr ago, PUBLISHED Feb 12, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
Here’s three things we know about Donald Trump.
He thirsts for revenge; he’ll stretch the limits of presidential power to enact it; and he never gives up after a defeat.
No wonder that six Democratic lawmakers, all military and intelligence veterans, are bracing for what comes next despite a grand jury refusing to indict them for warning service personnel against obeying illegal orders.
“I don’t put anything past them. Donald Trump has a pretty limited … capacity to move on from things, and he doesn’t take bad news well, and he’s got quite, quite the ego,” one of the six, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, said Wednesday.
Another of the six, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday whether she thought the administration may make a new attempt to indict her. She replied: “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
Rep. Jason Crow, a former army ranger and paratrooper who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, has launched a counterattack by warning of legal action unless the Department of Justice folds its retribution effort. “We are taking names, we are creating lists,” he told reporters Wednesday.
The lawmakers’ warning to the troops that started the showdown came in the form of a social media video that tipped Trump into a rage. He lambasted the six as “traitors” guilty of “sedition at the highest levels” who should potentially be eligible for the death penalty. His bid for revenge was backed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has launched an effort to lower Kelly’s last rank of captain and clip his retirement pay.
But it emerged on Tuesday that federal prosecutors in Washington had failed to convince a grand jury to indict the lawmakers. The attempt was the latest blatant example of Trump’s authoritarian bent and weaponizing of the DOJ.
The synergy of the department and the president’s personal and political goals was also on display on Capitol Hill Wednesday when Attorney General Pam Bondi attacked and taunted Democrats while declaring Trump “the greatest president in American history.”
Trump makes no secret of his zeal for vengeance and lets no attack go unanswered.
“If you go after me, I’m coming for you,” he wrote on Truth Social in August 2023, defining a life mantra that as president he again has vast powers to enact. And the president told talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw in 2024 that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”
The failure of the DOJ to secure an indictment was unusual, since the bar for launching a prosecution is quite low. But it was also a remarkable constitutional moment. It’s rare when a president is directly thwarted by citizens in a validation of the republican system. If Trump’s strongman reflexes are to be defied over the next three years, it may take many more small acts of citizenship.
“What was extraordinary was that an ordinary group of American citizens, a grand jury, stood up for the rule of law, stood up to this outrageous abuse of power and of taxpayer dollars,” Democratic Rep. Maggie Goodlander, another of the six, told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Wednesday.
“That is a win for the Constitution,” said Goodlander, a former intelligence officer in the US Navy Reserve.
A controversial video
Many Americans might question the motives of the six members of Congress in putting out such a video, which was certain to incite Trump. The lawmakers each took turns to read statements warning that Trump’s actions threatened the Constitution. Kelly, a former Navy aircraft carrier pilot and space shuttle astronaut, told service personnel “our laws are clear,” and added, “You can refuse illegal orders.”
For some, the video represented an unwise decision to embroil the military in a campaign-style stunt. Others worried the video created new political complications for military officers already walking a tightrope with the Trump administration. The video was released amid a series of US strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Pacific and the Caribbean that are taking place on questionable legal and constitutional grounds.
Defenders of the lawmakers, however, view the administration’s response as absurd, since they were simply reminding officers of the Constitution’s requirements — and exercising free speech rights granted to every American. A successful prosecution against lawmakers who oppose the president would deal a devastating blow to democracy by seeming to outlaw criticism of a president by a member of Congress, a separate branch of government.
Kelly has already taken legal action, alleging that the Pentagon is infringing his First Amendment rights. Senior US District Judge Richard Leon seemed sympathetic to Kelly’s argument that retired service members in Congress would be hampered in their work if they could not speak out against the Pentagon.
“Is it your position that they’re not supposed to offer their position” on military matters, Leon asked the counsel for the administration in a hearing this month. “How are they supposed to be able to do their job?”
But this is a White House that doesn’t try to hide its contempt for Congress and its oversight role. It disdains any form of dissent. And it has reshaped the justice system to accommodate Trump’s demands, shattering the wall that has traditionally been intended to exist between the DOJ and the Oval Office.
“You turned the people’s Department of Justice into Trump’s instrument of revenge,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told Bondi on Wednesday. “Trump orders up prosecutions like pizza, and you deliver every time.”
The attempted indictments of the six Democratic lawmakers also raise a darker possibility — that Trump’s second-term prosecutors prefer to present hopeless cases than disappoint a president who demands retribution.
Had they succeeded, it would have sent a message not only that members of Congress can be silenced by a president — but that ordinary citizens would be even more defenseless.
Bondi, however, argued on Wednesday that the department had been weaponized against Trump by the Biden administration, referring to cases it pursued charging Trump with 2021 election meddling and with keeping classified documents at his Florida home, and possibly to the Russia investigation in the president’s first term.
‘I trust our judicial system’
The six Democrats, also including Reps. Chrissy Houlahan and Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, are angry their GOP colleagues failed to defend them and their branch of government.
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the lawmakers “probably should be indicted.” He moderated his position slightly on Wednesday while maintaining his criticism of the video. “It’s a very dangerous gambit that they were playing. Should they be sent to jail? Hopefully not. But we need to call it out as being wildly inappropriate,” Johnson said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, also didn’t like the video but drew the line at prosecutions. “That wouldn’t have been my response to that,” Thune said. “I trust our judicial system. That’s the conclusion they arrived at. I think that pretty much lays things to rest, as far as I’m concerned.”
The administration may not show similar acceptance. In December, for example, a grand jury in Virginia refused to indict another Trump foe — New York Attorney General Letitia James — for alleged mortgage fraud. Federal prosecutors tried again a week later, but with the same result.
But Trump’s vengeance list keeps growing.
Another case, against former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, was dismissed by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor, former White House aide Lindsey Halligan, had been appointed unlawfully.
Numerous people considered by Trump to be enemies are under investigation, including ex-special counsel Jack Smith and California Sen. Adam Schiff. On Wednesday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee asked Bondi whether John Brennan, a former director of the CIA who is now a Trump critic, would be indicted. The attorney general said she’d received a referral from the Judiciary Committee on Brennan but could not discuss an ongoing case. However, she added, “No one is above the law.”
Crow is not waiting around. His lawyer Abbe Lowell wrote to US Attorney Jeanine Pirro threatening legal action if there was a second attempt to indict his client.
“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 at those who dare speak out and criticize this Administration,” Lowell wrote.
Crow was more direct.
“Every American should be raving pissed that they’re using taxpayer dollars in the public trust of the Department of Justice to go after political opponents, weaponizing their justice system,” Crow told reporters.