Former National Security Adviser Says Trump Should Use Military To Force Election Rerun
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A disgraced former national security adviser has said sitting President Donald Trump should use the military to force an election rerun.
General Michael Flynn said that the use of martial law to prevent Joe Biden from taking office would not be ‘unprecedented’ and within Trump’s power.
Flynn was previously convicted for lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 US presidential elections, but was recently pardoned by Trump.
‘There is no way in the world we are going to be able to move forward as a nation,’ he said in an interview yesterday, December 17.
Referencing one conspiracy theory surrounding the election, that voter software was tampered with, he said Trump ‘could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these [voting] machines’.
‘Within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states,’ he told far-right-wing news outlet Newsmax.
He added: ‘I mean, it’s not unprecedented. These people are out there talking about martial law like it’s something that we’ve never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times.
‘We have a constitutional process. We clearly have a constitutional process. That has to be followed.’
Martial law has never been declared by a US president to hold a new election.
Flynn first put forward the idea of invoking martial law in a tweet on December 1, gaining widespread criticism from defence officials and military experts.
One professor at Syracuse University, who specialises in national security law, told the Military Times that martial law has ‘no place in the US’ unless under extreme circumstances.
‘Apart from the fact that state and now federal investigators have found no evidence of election fraud that would change the election outcome, martial law has no place in the United States absent a complete breakdown of civil governing mechanisms,’ Bill Banks said.
Despite all election officials in the country declaring that no fraud took place, Trump is still standing firm by his belief.
Earlier this month, YouTube said it will begin taking down videos that promote conspiracy theories about the presidential election.
In its statement, it said ‘enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect’.
‘Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election,’ it added.
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