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Pentagon Chief Rejects Trump’s Threat To Use Military To Quell Unrest

June 3rd, 2020

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper speaks at a press conference at the Pentagon on March 5.

Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images

In a move that could possibly place his job in peril, Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly disagreed Wednesday with President Trump’s threatened use of the 1807 Insurrection Act to quell widespread unrest over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck.

“The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now,” Esper told reporters at a Pentagon briefing.”I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.”

“I’ve always believed and continue to believe,” Esper added, “that the National Guard is best suited for performing domestic support to civil authorities in these situations, in support of local law enforcement.”

The 1807 Insurrection Act authorizes a U.S. president to deploy the military in times of domestic emergencies. The law was updated in 2006 to include natural disasters and terrorist attacks as grounds for sending federal troops to restore order.

In a brief statement Monday evening in the White House Rose Garden, Trump put mayors and governors on notice that if they failed to “establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled,” he would take action.

“If a city or a state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” Trump declared, “then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them.”

Esper also defended having accompanied Trump that same evening as the president strode through Lafayette Park, a public square in front of the White House that had just been violently cleared of peaceful demonstrators by security forces clad in riot gear.

“I was not aware of law enforcement’s plans for the park. I was not briefed on them, nor should I expect to be,” Esper said Wednesday when asked about the forceful expulsion of protesters in what he described as a law enforcement action. “But they had taken what action I assume they felt was necessary, given what they faced.”