My slightly snarky take is that poor Ka$h feels left out of the “Pleasing Trump Club” after show-toady Pete Hegseth twitted that he’s directing that retired Captain, Astronaut and now Senator Mark Kelly be “investigated” at the command of his master. With Pete proving his devotion, what’s Ka$h to do?

The six Democratic members of Congress who recorded a video informing troops that they could refuse illegal orders said on Tuesday that they were being investigated by the F.B.I.

The group, made up of veterans of the military and the C.I.A., said the bureau had contacted the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms requesting interviews with them, though it is unclear what, if any, laws they might conceivably have violated with their video.

Former legal director of the ACLU, David Cole, explains the First Amendment ramifications of using governmental investigations to silence speech that displeases Trump.

On Monday, Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, directed the Pentagon to investigate Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain who flew combat missions during the gulf war and took several spaceflights as an astronaut before he was elected to serve Arizona’s citizens in Congress. His potential crime? Telling members of the armed services that they do not have to follow illegal orders. But saying so is not a crime; it’s a true statement of the law. And even if President Trump doesn’t like it, it’s protected by the First Amendment.

Of course, Cole’s op-ed was written before Senator Elissa Slotkin revealed that the FBI had reached out for interviews, but the law applies the same to the FBI as to the Department of War Defense.

Will anything come of either Hegseth’s or Patel’s efforts to punish members of Congress who hurt the president’s feelings? That remains to be seen. As was explained by lawyers knowledgeable about the UCMJ, it shouldn’t, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t sycophants within the military who will do whatever Trump wants.

As for Patel’s sending in the g-men, the answer is essentially the same. What crime, pray tell, would they want to discuss with these Congress folk?

The F.B.I. inquiry into the six lawmakers is being conducted by the bureau’s counterterrorism division, according to a statement by Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who served as a C.I.A. analyst and organized the video.

“The president directing the F.B.I. to target us is exactly why we made this video in the first place,” she wrote in the statement. “He believes in weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies and does not believe laws apply to him or his cabinet.”

The use of the FBI appears to be part of a campaign to chill Democrats from challenging Trump’s actions, which many (myself included) believe to be illegal. After all, if you engage in illegal actions, for which presidential immunity likely applies under Supreme Court precedent, and no one says anything, is it wrong? According to Trump, nothing he does is wrong by definition, since he’s the president and he gets to do anything he wants (including refusing to do things like pay SNAP benefits when he chooses not to do so).

If this had been done by a Democratic president, and the video by Republicans in Congress, it would be no less wrong to silence by intimidation and harassment than it is here.

Legal experts have dismissed the investigations as a transparent attempt to seek vengeance with no grounding in the law. As part of their training, U.S. troops are told that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders from their chain of command.

But it’s not the benign statement of law that outrages Trump, his minions or the MAGA faithful, but the “implication” that Trump’s orders are illegal, since there would be no purpose served in creating this video if not for orders that should be refused as illegal.

The lawmakers did not refer to a particular order that they viewed as illegal. But Mr. Kelly and others in the video earlier raised concerns about the fate of U.S. troops involved in the Trump administration’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

Some, including Ms. Slotkin, have expressed concerns that Mr. Trump might deploy active-duty U.S. military troops to American cities to crack down on or even shoot at protesters.

This summer, Ms. Slotkin reminded Mr. Hegseth that one of his predecessors, Mark T. Esper, wrote in his memoir that he had been asked by Mr. Trump during his first term why the military could not “just shoot” protesters in Washington in the legs.

Slotkin has been circumspect in her failure to provide any specific actions taken by Trump that she deems illegal. Whether it’s troops in American cities or bombs dropped on boats, this is unfortunate, and somewhat cowardly. For the 80 or so people murdered by the American military in international waters upon Trump’s orders, the video comes too late. For active duty troops carrying the arms of war onto American streets, the video still has purpose. But without pointing at specific acts, it falls short of making any point.

While the members of Congress say that they will not be intimidated when the FBI comes knocking, it’s unclear whether their failure to call out the illegal actions now reflects a lack of willingness to confront Trump’s illegal actions. At the very least, they should tell Ka$h’s boys that they have nothing to discuss and would do better spending their time investigating whether there are any Russian spies in the Oval Office or Trump’s cabinet.