Team Trump Was Prepared to Use the Military to Stay in Power

Jeffrey Clark, a top Justice Department official under then-President Donald Trump, suggested using military power to keep Trump in power despite his loss in the 2020 election.

Trump’s third indictment on Tuesday cites a January 3, 2021, exchange between Clark, who is referred to as “Co-Conspirator 4,” and White House deputy counsel Patrick Philbin. A month earlier, Philbin had warned Trump that “there is no world, there is no option in which you do not leave the White House on January 20th.”

Philbin also warned Clark that there was no fraud in the 2020 election, and if Trump tried to remain in office anyway, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.”

To that, Clark simply responded: “Well … that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

The Insurrection Act, which has been used only a handful of times in the last century, authorizes the U.S. president to deploy the military domestically to quell a rebellion or uprising.

The law has been criticized as being “dangerously vague” and “ripe for abuse.” (You may recall a New York Times op-ed in 2020 from Senator Tom Cotton, encouraging Trump to use the Insurrection Act to stop the Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the country.) Because of the way the law is written, Americans basically have to trust that the president will not abuse the powers of the Insurrection Act.

As we can see in Trump’s third indictment, he could not be trusted in that regard. His advisers were planning to stage a coup, and also preparing to use the military to quash protests if that coup failed.

Donald Trump knew that the 2020 election was legitimate, but he tried to overturn the vote results anyway. And his record-breaking third indictment has all the proof.

In fact, a top adviser warned about the efforts to overturn the election quite clearly: “I’ll obviously hustle to help on all fronts, but it’s tough to own any of this when it’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership,” an unnamed senior campaign adviser wrote in an email on December 8, 2020, referring to Trump’s “Elite Strike Task Force” led by Rudy Giuliani.

Trump was charged for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

The indictment hinges on the fact that Trump allegedly knew the whole time that there was no fraud in the election but continued to insist that there was. This wasn’t just some innocent slipup, and multiple people around Trump repeatedly tried to warn him.

Still, Trump insisted that fraudulent ballots had been cast and that electronic voting machines were switching votes to Democratic.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false,” the indictment said. “In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue—often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts—and he deliberately disregarded the truth.”

People including then–Vice President Mike Pence and senior Justice Department officials, whom Trump had appointed, repeatedly told him there was no evidence of fraud, according to the indictment. So did the director of national intelligence, another Trump appointee, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which Trump signed into existence in 2018.

Senior White House attorneys, whom Trump had picked, said there was no fraud, while staffers on his reelection campaign had already warned him he stood very little chance of winning. State-level allies repeatedly told him there was no evidence of fraud, and state and federal courts rejected every lawsuit that Trump and his allies filed to try to overturn the election results, informing him the suits were baseless.

Ignoring the truth for his preferred reality is becoming something of a habit for Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith had already indicted Trump for mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. But Trump has repeatedly insisted that all the material he brought to Florida was already declassified, and anyway, being president enabled him to declassify documents at will, including “just by thinking about it.”

But a president can’t do that, and Trump knew it. In an audio recording of a July 2021 meeting, Trump admits that he had classified material and could not declassify it because he no longer holds office. In another leaked recording of the same meeting, Trump says he has a classified Pentagon document but he can’t show it to the people there. His acknowledgment that he couldn’t show the document to others demonstrates that he knew full well that he wasn’t able to declassify documents at whim.

Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday for a record third time, and you could say he seems to be taking it very well. If by “well,” you mean “comparing being held accountable to the Holocaust.”

Trump was charged for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

“This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election,” his campaign said in a statement on Truth Social.

“But why did they wait two and a half years to bring these fake charges, right in the middle of President Trump’s winning campaign for 2024?” the statement continued.

“The answer is, election interference! The lawlessness of these persecutions of President Trump and his supporters is reminiscent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes. President Trump has always followed the law and the Constitution, with advice from many highly accomplished attorneys.”

But if Trump has always “followed the law and the Constitution,” then explain his ever-growing pile of legal troubles. The twice-impeached president has been charged with business fraud in New York for his alleged role in making hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. He also has been charged with keeping national defense information without authorization, making false statements, and conspiring to obstruct justice.

Trump is likely to be indicted in Georgia in the next few weeks for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election—despite a failed attempt to block that probe. And he has been found liable of sexual abuse and defamation, and sued for defamation again.

Third time’s the charm? Donald Trump was indicted Tuesday for a whopping third time, adding to an already sweeping list of charges against him.

Trump was charged for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. He faces four counts that include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Six co-conspirators were also mentioned, but their names were not listed in the indictment.

In the very beginning of the indictment, Jack Smith calls out Trump for his refusal to accept the election results.

“The defendant, Donald J. Trump, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for reelection in 2020,” the indictment states. “The Defendant lost the 2020 election.”

The indictment also notes that Trump knowingly spread lies about election fraud: “These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway—to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.”

Trump was warned in July that he was a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to reverse the election. The twice-impeached, thrice-indicted, and liable for sexual abuse and defamation former president is now forcing Republicans to answer the question: Is someone charged with trying to overthrow democracy fit to serve?

Until now, Republicans have been up in arms, rushing to Trump’s defense. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy suggested the potential indictment was because Trump was polling well, while Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene called Smith a “weak little bitch.”

Trump has been charged with business fraud in New York for his alleged role in making hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. He also has been charged with keeping national defense information without authorization, making false statements, and conspiring to obstruct justice. And he is still under investigation in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election—despite an attempt to block that probe.

This piece has been updated.

Two Trump allies in Michigan have been charged in an investigation into the improper acquisition of voting machines in 2020 as part of an attempt to overturn the presidential election.

Matthew DePerno, whom Donald Trump endorsed in his unsuccessful campaign for attorney general last year, and former state Representative Daire Rendon were both charged Monday, according to online court records.

DePerno, whose name was misspelled as “DeParno” in the records, was charged with two counts of undue possession of a voting machine, one count of conspiracy for undue possession of a voting machine, and one count of conspiracy for unauthorized access. Rendon was charged with one count of conspiracy for undue possession of a voting machine and one count of false pretenses.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel launched the investigation in February last year. But she handed the reins to special prosecutor D.J. Hilson a few months later after DePerno, who was running against Nessel for attorney general, came under scrutiny.

Other people still under investigation include Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf and Doug Logan, the former head of Cyber Ninjas, a pro-Trump data security firm that oversaw a controversial (and, as it turns out, entirely unnecessary) 2020 election review in Arizona.

The charges against Rendon and DePerno relate to attempts by Trump allies to acquire voting machines. There are investigations into similar efforts across the country, as pro-Trump activists tried to access the voting data and prove the election had been rigged against the former president. One such investigation is in Georgia and could factor into the highly anticipated indictment of Donald Trump for trying to overturn the state’s election results.

In Michigan, four clerks in three different counties gave voting machines to third parties. The machines were taken to Detroit, where a group of men broke into them and performed “tests” on them, according to Nessel’s office. The group returned the machines weeks or even months later, after the clerks became nervous.

Nessel has been steadily cracking down on election deniers. Last month, she charged 16 people, including top members of the state’s Republican Party, with felony for pretending to be electors in the 2020 presidential election.