8/11/20
Dear General Milley:
As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you are well aware of your duties in ordinary times: to serve as principal military advisor to the president of the United States, and to transmit the lawful orders of the president and Secretary of Defense to combatant commanders. In ordinary times, these duties are entirely consistent with your oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…” We do not live in ordinary times. The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral system, threatening to remain in office in defiance of our Constitution. In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order. Due to a dangerous confluence of circumstances, the once-unthinkable scenario of authoritarian rule in the United States is now a very real possibility. There can be little doubt that Mr. Trump is facing electoral defeat. More than 160,000 Americans have died from COVID 19, and that toll is likely to rise to 300,000 by November. One in ten U.S. workers is unemployed, and the U.S. economy in the last quarter suffered the greatest contraction in its history.
Faced with these grim prospects, Mr. Trump has engaged in a systemic disinformation campaign to undermine public confidence in our elections. He has falsely claimed that mail-in voting is “inaccurate and fraudulent.” He is actively sabotaging the U.S. Postal Service in an effort to delay and discredit mail-in votes. He has suggested delaying the 2020 election, despite lacking the authority to do so. The stakes of the 2020 election are especially high for Mr. Trump; in defeat, he will likely face criminal prosecution. Given this dizzying array of threats not merely to his political prospects, but also his liberty and wealth, Mr. Trump is following the playbook of dictators throughout history: he is building a private army answerable only to him. In the Constitutional crisis described above, your duty is to give unambiguous orders directing U.S. military forces to support the Constitutional transfer of power. Should you remain silent, you will be complicit in a coup d’état. For 240 years, the United States has been spared the horror of violent political succession. Imperfect though it may be, our Union has been moving toward greater perfection, from one peaceful transfer of power to the next. The rule of law created by our Constitution has made this miracle possible. However, our Constitutional order is not self-sustaining.