Trump Wants To Bring Back Coup Plotters Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark – Rolling Stone

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Jeffrey Clark and Michael Flynn are leading Donald Trump’s efforts to stage a coup d’etat in 2020 and 2021. The result is mob violence, deaths at the Capitol in Washington, DC, a series of criminal investigations and lawsuit, and what one former senior Trump aide went on record to call “the worst day for the Republican Party since the assassination of Lincoln.”

In any other era, scandals like this would have been enough to send those men into immediate political retirement. But this was not one of those times.

Trump is now the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican primary and remains the leader of the GOP, and he’s telling those close to him how much he wants both fellow coup plotters officially on his side for a potential second term in office. .

The former president has privately mentioned on several occasions in the past few months how he is seriously considering names like Michael Flynn and Jeffrey Clark for high-level positions in a potential second White term. House. That’s according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, as well as another person who elaborated on the matter. The two worked to overturn the election in which Flynn lobbied the president to institute martial law, and then-President Trump hoped to fire the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and replace him with the more likable Clark.

In at least one of these conversations, Trump was self-aware enough to say that any senior role for Flynn would “probably” have to be an appointment not confirmed by the Senate, one of the a source with direct knowledge tells Rolling Stone. Flynn’s comments calling for martial law at the end of the election prompted some Republicans, such as Sen. Mitt Romney, who criticized him, potentially leaving any Senate confirmation position effectively out of reach for the retired Army general.

“[Trump] said he believed both were ‘strong’ candidates for the top job. He mentioned that, and some other names, I know a few times…We’ll see if it happens,” recalled another person with direct knowledge. “President Trump calls Gen. Flynn who was a ‘hero’ all the time. Why doesn’t he want a hero working for him?” Editor’s pick

Of course, there are reasons why people not named Donald Trump don’t want any of these men to work for the GOP leader again.

“Bringing these two back into the government in high-level positions is tantamount to a declaration of authoritarian principles by a presidential administration. Even considering it would be shameful and anti-American,” said Walter Shaub , a senior ethics fellow at the Project on Government Oversight and the former director of the Office of Government Ethics.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung wrote that “President Trump is running to drain the swamp and restore prosperity to America. That’s why he’s dominating the polls— in the primary and general elections—and the American people are rallying behind his campaign.”

Flynn, who famously invoked the Fifth Amendment when the Committee asked on January 6 whether the violence in the insurrection was justified, is “unfit for public service” and “no one should put him again in a position of trust,” according to Shaub. “I was surprised [Clark] is still allowed to be a lawyer, let alone a public servant.

The moves are part of Trump’s stated desire to make his theoretical second term a revenge tour to revive people and policies that even some members of his own party consider too extreme. Over the past year, Trump has considered intensifying the historic federal “killing spree” of his first term with mass executions, gallows, and firing squads, invading Mexico, and bringing back an expanded version of his “Muslim ban.”

He will also redouble his attacks on the democratic system. Since the violent end of Trump’s presidency, the former president has sought to turn his baseless propaganda about widespread election fraud into Republican Party dogma. In many cases, Trump has already succeeded, accelerating the right’s previous crusades against voting rights. The fact that Trump is seriously considering bringing back figures like Clark and Flynn also shows how focused Trump remains on his lies about the 2020 presidential election — which led to the fateful Jan. 6 Capitol riot – and how unlikely he is to continue, if he ever gets another shot at running the country. Related

Clark, in particular, embodies the instinct. The former assistant attorney general from the Justice Department’s environmental division is said to have come into action in the run-up to the 2020 election with ideas on how Trump and his administration could screw it up. Specifically, he pushed Justice Department leaders to send a letter to the Georgia state legislature claiming the department had discovered “significant fraud” and urging it to create alternative voter records. The effort — which was stopped by senior Justice Department leaders — effectively endorsed bogus conspiracy theories about election fraud and gave an air of official legitimacy to efforts to subvert the election.

Clark’s devotion to the cause of Trump’s election nearly landed him one of the top jobs in the former president’s first administration. Trump tried unsuccessfully to make Clark his new attorney general in the final weeks of his presidency. Today, Clark is a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, an increasingly influential Trump-aligned think tank. He is also a dedicated poster on the president’s own social media network, Truth Social, where Trump shares his criticisms of former Attorney General Bill Barr’s lack of dedication to investigating claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. .

Trump’s enthusiasm for Clark comes despite his mounting legal troubles, which are directly related to his and Trump’s plans to destroy the democratic order. FBI agents searched Clark’s home and seized his phone as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to tamper with the 2020 election.

Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, played an outsized role in Trump and other Republicans’ attempts to overturn the 2020 election and stop the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6. The retired lieutenant general of the Army was an early and loud voice calling on Trump to “declare limited Martial Law” and “temporarily suspend the Constitution” and urged the then-president to do so in a tense Oval Office meeting with Sidney Powell. Given Trump’s legal options to overturn the election, Flynn supported the “Stop the Steal” movement and spoke at a rally for the group with Alex Jones and Ali Alexander the night before the uprising in early 2021.

Most recently, Flynn devoted his speaking time to the Christian nationalist “ReAwaken America Tour,” which hosted an array of MAGA luminaries who attempted to overturn or challenge the election results, such as pillow magnate Mike Lindell and attorney Sidney Powell. Trending

Trump has kept in touch with his former national security advisor since leaving office, calling her Christian nationalist prayer meetings, and even hinting publicly that there may be a job for him in the future Trump administration. In a speech at a Republican gathering in Florida in April, Trump called out his former national security adviser for attending. Flynn, he told the audience, was “a friend of mine” who “went through hell” and “handled it like the brave man he was.”

“Just a year and a half,” Trump said. “Stay healthy.”

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