A successful campaign to get all 10 surviving former US Defense Departments to sign a letter warning President Donald Trump not to involve the military in his grievances over the election results took place between New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, former ambassador and defense officer Eric Edelman said.
“Attempts to involve the US armed forces in resolving electoral disputes would put us in dangerous, illegal and unconstitutional territory,” the former secretaries wrote in the letter, published as an op-ed by the Washington Post.
Edelman wrote and orchestrated the letter in consultation with former Vice President Dick Cheney, himself a former defense secretary, along with the help of former State Department adviser Eliot Cohen.
Cheney told Edelman he would sign the letter if he could involve other former secretaries, Edelman told ABC News Monday. Edelman contacted the Post and had all 10 secretaries add their names on Friday, he said.
The motivations and timing for the letter were diverse, Edelman told ABC News.
“There is the resignation of Esper right after the election, there is the installation of this cadre of political appointees around (acting Defense Secretary Chris) Miller there, there is the rush for the exit in Afghanistan,” said Edelman, also referring to a reported attempt by the Trump administration to split up the US Cyber Command and National Security Agency last month, as well as Trump’s controversial appeal to the Georgia Secretary of State on Saturday.
Edelman also said comments by former national security adviser Michael Flynn about the possibility of Trump invoking martial law to repeat elections in battlefield states are of concern.
In a Newsmax interview in mid-December, Flynn explained what he considered Trump’s military options. Although Flynn claimed he was not advocating for these options to be exercised and for constitutional processes to be followed, he just weeks earlier tweeted a press release from an organization calling for “limited martial law” to hold new elections.
A former US official who helped coordinate the letter said the two signers who served during the Trump administration, Mark Esper and retired Marine General Jim Mattis, had some reservations before adding their names to the op-ed.
“I think Minister Mattis was a bit reluctant for good reasons,” said the former official. “He understandably feels that as a retiree he still falls under the (Uniform Code of Military Justice), and you know, retired officers shouldn’t criticize the commander-in-chief, and they’re not supposed to.”
The former official told ABC News that he came by after being persuaded by others involved in the project “ not to think about this as’ former Marine four-star general officer Jim Mattis’, ‘but as’ former Secretary of Defense Mattis’. . “
Esper, who was impeached by Trump after the presidential election, was concerned that his participation looked like personal retaliation, but soon decided to join the other former Pentagon heads, the official said.
Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator who served as Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, told ABC News on Monday that he deliberated before adding his name to the opinion to make sure it wouldn’t “ get more out of anything than maybe there really is. “
Hagel said he decided Trump’s actions and rhetoric aimed at destroying the election results posed a high enough risk.
“I’m not too worried, but the fact is that we have a president who has acted erratically and irresponsibly, and I think our country has been endangered in many situations over the past four years,” he told ABC News.
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry said in one tweet Sunday that “Each of us has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution; that oath does not change according to the direction of the party.”
Robert Gates, secretary of defense under both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, made an unqualified account when approached by Edelman, who served as under secretary of defense for policy during Gates’ time at the Pentagon, a spokesman for the former secretary said .
The letter ended with a plea to the Department of Defense to ensure a peaceful and smooth transfer of power.
“Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller and his subordinates – political appointees, officials and civil servants – are each bound by oath, law and precedent to facilitate, and wholeheartedly, the entry into office of the new government,” letter said. “They must also refrain from any political actions that undermine the election results or hinder the success of the new team.”
Edelman said this section was in response to President-elect Joe Biden who recently accused Pentagon political leaders of “obstruction.”
Miller went back in a statement last Monday.
The Department of Defense has conducted 164 interviews with more than 400 officials and provided more than 5,000 pages of documents – far more than initially requested by Biden’s transition team. DOD’s efforts now exceed those of recent administrations by more than three weeks. and we will continue to schedule additional meetings for the remainder of the transition and answer any requests for information within our reach, ”Miller said.
Some of the language in the letter directly reflected the comments of current defense officials, including Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, each of whom said before and after the election that the military should play. participate in electoral disputes.
“There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of a US election,” McCarthy said in a Dec. 22 statement.
That line was quoted without citing the source in Sunday’s op-ed.
The other former secretaries who signed the letter are Ashton Carter, Leon Panetta, William Perry, and Donald Rumsfeld.