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Pentagon Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest
[link=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/us/politics/trump-military-election.html]https://www.nytimes.com/2…military-election.html[/link]
[b]Defense Department officials said top generals could resign if Mr. Trump ordered the active-duty military into the streets to quell protests.[/b]
I believe deeply in the principle of an apolitical U.S. military, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written answers to questions from House lawmakers released last month. In the event of a dispute over some aspect of the elections, by law, U.S. courts and the U.S. Congress are required to resolve any disputes, not the U.S. military. I foresee no role for the U.S. armed forces in this process.
But that has not stopped an intensifying debate in the military about its role should a disputed election lead to civil unrest.
On Aug. 11, John Nagl and Paul Yingling, both retired Army officers and Iraq war veterans, [link=https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/08/all-enemies-foreign-and-domestic-open-letter-gen-milley/167625/]published an open letter[/link] to General Milley on the website Defense One. In a few months time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your constitutional oath, they wrote. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.
Pentagon officials swiftly said such an outcome was preposterous. Under no circumstances, they said, would the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff send Navy SEALs or Marines to haul Mr. Trump out of the White House. If necessary, such a task, Defense Department officials said, would fall to U.S. Marshals or the Secret Service. The military, by law, the officials said, takes a vow to the Constitution, not to the president, and that vow means that the commander in chief of the military is whoever is sworn in at 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day.
But senior leaders at the Pentagon, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that they were talking among themselves about what to do if Mr. Trump, who will still be president from Election Day to Inauguration Day, invokes the Insurrection Act and tries to send troops into the streets, as he threatened to do during the protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Both General Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper opposed the move then, and Mr. Trump backed down.
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6 Replies
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While true that it will be the US Marshals who will remove a kicking and screaming Mr Trump from the oval office, the question of military involvement would be much earlier. I anticipate that this will be in early december after Mr Trumps handpicked supreme court gives him a 9:0 beatdown on the final certification of electors in a few states. He is such a nut, I wouldn’t put it past him to order tanks to ‘crush the resistance’ and force the Pennsylvania secretary of state to correct some perceived wrong.
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[link=https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/12/top-general-trump-ad-consent-429112]General Mark MIlley did not give his consent to be used in Trump political ad
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“President Trump wants you to request your ballot,” said the ad on the website for The Hill newspaper. Clicking on the ad, which includes the tagline “Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc,” leads to the Trump campaign’s [link=https://vote.donaldjtrump.com/]voter sign-up page[/link].
There’s only one problem: The photo featuring Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley was used without the officer’s “knowledge or consent,” according to a defense official who requested anonymity to speak about a sensitive topic.
The military has strict rules against uniformed service members participating in political campaigns, and the ad is just the latest example of the president or those around him pulling the nation’s highest-ranking officer and other Defense Department officials into the political realm.
“As a matter of long-standing policy, military service members and federal employees acting in their official capacity may not engage in activities that associate the DOD with any partisan political campaign or elections, candidate, cause or issue,” [link=https://www.defense.gov/ask-us/faq/Article/1774809/what-is-the-policy-for-participating-in-political-campaigns/]the DOD’s website states[/link] in a post from March 2019.
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Magigie Haberman NYT: “During the meeting, the president asked about Flynns suggestion of deploying the military, those briefed said. That was also shot down.”
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same meeting —
[b]Giuliani Urged Federal Seizure of Voting Machines[/b][/h1]
Rudy Giuliani pressed the Department of Homeland Security to seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election, the [link=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/us/politics/trump-sidney-powell-voter-fraud.html]New York Times[/link] reports.
Giuliani was told the department does not have the authority to do such a thing.
The [link=https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1340366688622141440?s=20]Wall Street Journal[/link] reports deploying the military was also discussed at a White House meeting but nixed.Confirming @maggieNYT @KannoYoungs: Trump discussed naming Sidney Powell special counsel on election fraud. Meadows, Cipollone pushed back. Deploying the military was raised in the meeting but nixed. Giuliani pushed DHS to get involved but was told they don’t have the authority. https://t.co/4XwAnl0x1F
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) December 19, 2020
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If any of his cabinet had backbone it would be 25th amendment time. Not that it shouldnt have been a while ago.
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There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.” Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville in a joint statement issued yesterday.
The fact that it has even gotten as far as this … that the military is having to make public statements confirming they won’t Trump use the military to steal (“re-run”) the election is just disgusting.
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