Military required not to follow unlawful orders, Pam Bondi said in past court filing

The Trump administration’s top law enforcement official and legal adviser said in a brief filed last year in the Supreme Court that service members are required not to carry out illegal orders from a president.

News of the resurfaced brief, first reported on by The New York Times, comes as U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Fox Chapel, and five other Democratic lawmakers are facing backlash from the Trump administration for publishing a video last month saying that members of the military and intelligence community are obligated to refuse illegal orders.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, then serving as a lawyer for the conservative America First Policy Institute, said the same thing in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the nation’s highest court in March 2024.

“Military officers are required not to carry out unlawful orders,” Bondi wrote.

“The military would not carry out a patently unlawful order from the president to kill nonmilitary targets. Indeed, service members are required not to do so,” Bondi added in the brief, which became part of a landmark case dealing with presidential immunity.

Trump had been seeking immunity from prosecution on charges of election interference during the 2020 election. The court’s ruling granted Trump substantial immunity from prosecution.

Deluzio’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Bondi’s brief.

While Bondi filed the brief in support of Trump, the president and some high-ranking members of his administration lashed out at the Democratic lawmakers after their video came out in November.

“Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad,” Fox Chapel’s Deluzio, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate who served as a Navy officer, said in the video.

“Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” added U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, also a former Navy officer.

“You must refuse illegal orders,” Deluzio said.

In the video, the lawmakers did not identify any orders issued during the Trump administration they considered illegal. Deluzio has said the video has taken on added significance since its release, given the increasing scrutiny of military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean.

Trump said on social media that the lawmakers’ video amounted to “seditious behavior” and noted such behavior could be punishable by death. He said the lawmakers should be arrested and put on trial, and he shared a post from another social media user saying they should be hanged.

Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth labeled the Democratic lawmakers as the “Seditious Six” and said their video was “despicable, reckless, and false.” The Pentagon later said it planned to investigate Kelly over potential breaches of military law, and Deluzio said the FBI contacted House and Senate officials to request interviews with the six lawmakers.

Last week, a 2016 video resurfaced showing Hegseth, an Army veteran, saying that refusing to follow unlawful orders is part of the military “ethos.”