Former Trump administration DHS official Miles Taylor, the anonymous author of a New York Times op-ed article in 2018 criticizing President Donald Trump, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Trump wanted members of Congress to be killed on January 6 so he could declare martial law and stay in power.
Taylor said, “It made my heart race to watch today’s hearing, really, because they brought up Trump’s mindset, and the question was, what was his mindset? I’m going to demystify that for America right now. I’ve spent time with the guy in the Oval Office, the White House Situation Room, and Air Force One. I’ll tell you what his mindset was on January 6.”
He continued, “I believe Donald Trump wanted people to die. He wanted people to die. He wanted people to die who were elected officials, en masse, so he could call out the military, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, so he could prevent the peaceful transfer of power. That’s not a conspiracy theory. In fact, in hindsight, it’s pretty damn clear to me this is what he had in mind from day one in office. At first, we were scratching our heads about why he wouldn’t do anything about domestic terrorism when we were going to the White House, saying the numbers were up, and Trump was making excuses for domestic terrorist groups, why he always brought up the Insurrection Act, which he wanted to use to bring out the military to enforce laws.”
He added, “All of these things came together and made sense on January 6. Why did he make excuses for domestic terrorist groups? Because he was on their side. Those were the armed people that were going to do those things for him.”
Taylor concluded, “He wanted people to die on January 6 so that he could use those presidential powers to prevent our democracy from transitioning to a new president. And I think the committee presented that in extremely powerful fashion.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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