(HorizonPost.com) – The former senior counsel to Trump’s DHS Secretary John Kelly last week noted what he believes is the most jarring revelation from special counsel Jack Smith’s latest federal indictment against the former president.
In a column at The Dispatch, Kevin Carroll argues that advisors for then-President Trump openly discussed using the military to put down any potential riots that would break out if Trump refused to leave office on January 20, 2021, placing the US military in the position of either defying lawful orders or turning weapons on Americans.
The indictment reveals that Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark was warned by a deputy White House counsel that if Trump tried to remain in office despite the lack of evidence that election fraud altered the outcome of the election, there would be riots in US cities. Clark responded by noting that this is “why there’s an Insurrection Act,” according to the indictment.
The indictment also reveals that Trump campaign lawyer John Eastman was warned as well about the risk of causing widespread rioting and similarly pointed out that there have been times in American history when violence was necessary to protect the Republic.
Carroll, a former Army and CIA officer, argues in his column that Trump’s advisors “anticipated” that their plot to keep Trump in office would lead to unrest and had planned for the president to order the National Guard to “put those riots down.”
He contends that the plan amounted to expecting the US military to use force against Americans as a way to keep Donald Trump in the White House, despite the “objective fact” that he lost the election to Joe Biden.
Carroll argues that this action would have resulted in a “tragic loss of life” and could have spiraled out of control, forcing military leaders to choose between abandoning the American tradition of a civilian-controlled military or turning their weapons on civilians solely to keep the losing candidate in power.
Carroll concludes his column by suggesting that if Trump is convicted, the “potential harm” of his plan to unleash the military on the civilian population must be “taken into account” during sentencing.
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