Trump should be arrested for the riot at the Capitol, Pelosi told Milley

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the top U.S. Army general that former President Donald Trump was a “dictator” who “should be arrested immediately” after he called the coup attempt to stay in the White House by inciting on January 6 Uprising of the capitol, a new book revealed.

Pelosi also said in a phone call in January with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen Mike Milley that “Republicans have blood on their hands” for enabling Trump’s misconceptions about his ability to sustain the presidency, the book said.

“But it is a sad situation for our country that we were taken by a dictator to use force against another branch of government,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, told Milley on the call a few days after the unrest. , according to “Peril,” a new book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.

US President Donald Trump signaled as he spoke at a rally to contest the certification of the results of the 2020 US presidential election by the US Congress, in Washington, US, January 6, 2021.

Jim Bourg | Reuters

“And he’s still sitting there. He should have been arrested. He should have been arrested on the spot,” said Pelosi, who is second in line in the presidential order.

“He had a coup d’etat against us to keep him in position. There must be some way to remove him,” said the spokesman, who at the time was trying to pursue the suspension of Trump’s power as president by taking then- Vice President Mike Pence and the Trump Cabinet to push for the 25th Amendment of the constitution.

The book says Milley believes the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters was a planned, concerted attack designed to overthrow the U.S. government to prevent Congress from confirming Joe Biden’s election as president. .

The unrest began after Trump persuaded a crowd in a rally outside the White House to march to the Capitol and fight for confirmation of Biden’s Electoral College victory. The attack was delayed by several hours of Biden’s confirmation, and directly led to five deaths.

The book said Milley feared that even after the uprising, Trump could still find what the general called a “Reichstag moment,” a reference to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler assuming full power in Germany. after the burning of the country’s Parliament building in 1933.

The book details Milley’s efforts to prevent Trump from starting a nuclear war or launching another military attack in his last days in office.

He told Pelosi that “there is no chance of a snowball in hell this president, or any president could launch nuclear weapons illegally, immorally, unethically without proper certification,” according to the book.

But after the call, MIlley, who “has no absolute certainty that the military will control or trust Trump,” held a meeting with senior officials of the National Military Command Center to review procedures for launching nuclear weapons.

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Only the president can order such use, he reminded officials, but told them that he, as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be involved in ordering the launch, according to the book.

He then walked around the room, which each officer confirmed they understood who he was, the authors wrote.

The authors also wrote that Pence in December called former Vice President Dan Quayle to discuss the pressure he felt from Trump to block Biden’s victory.

Pence asked Quayle, his fellow Republican in Indiana, if it was possible to intervene as the presiding official of the upcoming joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 to ensure that all of the required 270 Electoral votes are not certified, which if where the election of the next president will be dropped in the House of Representatives.

While Democrats hold a simple majority of seats in the House, Republicans hold a majority of state congressional delegations, which will determine the outcome of the election.

“Mike, you don’t have the flexibility here,” Quayle said, according to the book. “Nothing. Zero. Forget it. Put it away.”

Pence previously said he told Trump that, but the president believes he can do it, as do others unnamed.

“No, just stop it,” said Quayle, who as vice president in 1993 presided over the joint session of Congress that confirmed the election of Bill Clinton, who defeated former President George HW Bush.

The book adds that on October 30, four days before Election Day, Milley summoned his military counterpart in China, Gen Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, because of the intelligence shown to Chinese officials that believe the US invasion of their country.

The conversation came as Trump consistently blamed the Covid-19 pandemic in China during the campaign’s emergence.

“General Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything will be okay,” Milley said, according to the book. “We will not attack or perform any kinetic operation against you.”

Li replied, “Okay.”

“I take you at your word,” Li said, according to the book.

Milley did not tell Trump about the phone call, the authors reported.

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