Trump Admin Reportedly Prepped Proclamation Invoking the Insurrection Act Amid Protests Last Year

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Two senior Trump administration officials told The New York Times that White House aides wrote a proclamation to invoke Insurrection Act in the event that the president decided to use military force to counter domestic unrest after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Trump told his attorney general, defense secretary, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he wanted thousands of U.S. soldiers patrolling the streets of Washington, D.C. He was steered away from the idea, but a group of White House staffers nonetheless drafted a proclamation in case the president changed his mind.

Trump denied the report. “It’s absolutely not true,” he told the Times. “And if it was true, I would have done it.”

The aides drafted the proclamation on June 1, 2020. That same day, in a statement from the Rose Garden, Trump threatened to deploy the military to U.S. cities to quell riots. “If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them,” he said.

Also on that day, Trump walked from the White House to to a nearby church for a photo op. Before doing so, law enforcement officials violently dispersed a group of peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square. An incomplete inspector general’s report from the Department of the Interior said that the square had been slated for clearing anyway.

The Insurrection Act is an 1807 law allows the president to use military force to suppress domestic rebellions and civil unrest. The act was famously used by Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy to force racial desegregation in the South. In more recent times, it was invoked during the Los Angeles riots, but at the request of the governor of California.

According to the two Trump administration officials, the president felt the unrest was embarrassing the country on the world stage.