Did President Trump Trigger The Insurrection Act? Nearly 10k Troops In DC Have People Worried

Nearly 10,000 troops descending on downtown Washington DC this weekend had many on Twitter and Facebook wonder: Did President Trump trigger the Insurrection Act?

There had been several reports by influencers that Trump has indeed gone to extremes and done what no one in DC thought he would, Buzzfeed News even worried out loud about it:

Even as elected officials in the District of Columbia warned residents to stay home and avoid potentially violent skirmishes with pro-Trump protesters early last week, behind the scenes they were increasingly focused on what, at the time, they considered a far bigger threat: the president himself.

In a closed briefing to the 13-member City Council last Monday, the DC Attorney General’s office shared a two-page memo analyzing the risk that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to seize control of the city’s Metropolitan Police Department, according to three members in attendance. The 214-year-old law authorizes the president to deploy any of the country’s state or federal armed forces to suppress civil disobedience or an uprising.

The legal memo, “Potential Paths of Federal Incursion Into District Law Enforcement,” focused on whether the Insurrection Act would allow Trump to take control of the MPD. The document, the existence of which has not previously been reported, also contemplated the possibility of the White House using the National Guard and federal law enforcement agencies such as the US Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons to effectively take control of the city.

It is an interesting coincidence if you believe in coincidences, that Trump is down at the Alamo as thousands of troops take over the swamp.