Yale Law School graduate and Vice President JD Vance faced sharp pushback from a former U.S. attorney after he stepped in on Sunday to defend Donald Trump amid a growing dispute over whether service members should refuse unlawful orders from the president.
The controversy stems from clashes between Trump and Democratic members of Congress who have military backgrounds. Those lawmakers have publicly urged service members not to comply with any presidential order they believe to be illegal.
Over the weekend, Trump lashed out at that guidance on Truth Social, writing:
“THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OK.”
He continued, “IT WASN’T, AND NEVER WILL BE! IT WAS SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL, AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME. THERE CAN BE NO OTHER INTERPRETATION OF WHAT THEY SAID!”
Earlier, on Thursday, he had escalated his rhetoric even further, warning of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
As criticism of Trump’s language mounted, Vance rushed to back him up by sharing a clip of Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) pressing her argument against the president on ABC. Posting on X, the vice president wrote, “If the president hasn’t issued illegal orders, them (sic) members of Congress telling the military to defy the president is by definition illegal.”
That claim drew a rapid and pointed response from former U.S. Attorney and University of Alabama School of Law professor Joyce Vance, who addressed the issue on her Substack. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she wrote.
Pointing to JD Vance’s elite legal education, she argued, “Anyone with a Yale Law School education should be in a position to understand that a) members of the military have an obligation not to follow an illegal order, b) that reminding them of that obligation neither violates the law nor instructs them to defy a legal order, and c) that using those false statements to claim that members of Congress who made the video they object to so strongly is not ‘by definition’ illegal, and certainly not for members of Congress who have speech and debate clause privilege even if there had been something incorrect about their statements.”
After laying out her legal reasoning, Joyce Vance went on to question the broader strategy coming from the White House.
“What is the administration’s point here? Do they contest that the military and the intelligence community should pursue concerns through their chain of command to prevent compliance with illegal orders? Do they want those public servants to believe they must follow any orders, no matter what?” she wrote, before concluding bluntly: “Because that is not the law.”
