Thread by @PMatzko

10 former defense secretaries felt the need to assert the military's neutrality in partisan politics. That's disconcerting, sure, but when the coup comes someday, it's not the military you need to worry about the most. Thread.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/10-fo…

Remember, there are 132,000 armed federal agents, most of whom are based around Washington, DC. That's over a quarter of the size of the actual, active-duty US Army, and many of them are military veterans with access to military-grade firepower.

politico.com/news/magazine/…

After all, when Trump needed a paramilitary force to do what the military was reluctant to do--clear peaceful protestors out of Lafayette Park for a photo op--he turned to a mix of forces from the Bureau of Prisons, Park Police, Secret Service, and so on.

These paramilitarists don't have the military tradition of non-intervention & can be deployed at the sole discretion of Trump appointed officials, many of whom, like Chad Wolf at the Department of Homeland Security, are acting officials who didn't require Congressional approval.

And all it took to send a swarm of thousands of these paramilitary forces into Washington, DC was Trump asking his Attorney General (and functional personal attorney) Bill Barr to get it done for him.

And note that there have been *zero* consequences for what amounted to a paramilitary occupation of part of the US capital at the behest of a President intent on doing so to secure partisan advantage in the election.

That was just a few months ago! That should freak you out!!

So how might a more competent, wannabe authoritarian use these paramilitary forces to steal an election?

Well, using the cover of putting down anti-administration protests, station these forces in major urban areas around the country to "keep the peace."

You can always ask a few loyal governors or mayors to issue an invite to do so, but that's optional.

Then, order those forces, under the aegis of DHS, to secure the ballot boxes--even if just the drop-boxes for mail-in ballots--in order to "protect the integrity of the election."

Does that sound unbelievable?

Do note that Trump's surrogate actually *did* ask Bill Barr to seize voting machines. He demurred, but remember, this is the same guy who sent paramilitary forces to suppress peaceful protestors at Presidential request.

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

Once you have the ballot boxes in hand, there's a host of things that can...happen. For example, if it's a drop box from a blue city, maybe it gets a little lost on the way to DC. Oops. Hey, it's not *my* fault we lost 11,780 votes. Well, the people have spoken and I win!

In summary, the most realistic scenario for a future coup in the US is paramilitary rather than military. It uses forces that currently exist (and are growing), was already given a kind of small-scale trial run last year, and those precedents haven't attracted much pushback.