When the time comes for President Donald Trump to leave the Oval Office, combat veterans John Nagl and Paul Yingling said they are confident he will not leave willingly. They wrote an open letter to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley published by DefenseOne urging him to remove the president at the end of his term, if necessary.
"The president of the United States is actively subverting our electoral system, threatening to remain in office in defiance of our Constitution," Nagl and Yingling wrote. "In a few months’ time, you may have to choose between defying a lawless president or betraying your Constitutional oath. We write to assist you in thinking clearly about that choice."
"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," the letter continues.
Nagl is a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Head of School at The Haverford School outside Philadelphia. Yingling is a retired Army lieutenant colonel with five deployments. From the potential legal charges Trump faces once out of office, the unidentified federal law enforcement agents he has "assembled," and his comments undermining the upcoming elections, "the once-unthinkable scenario of authoritarian rule in the United States is now a very real possibility," they wrote.
Milley, for reasons recognized by the Goldwater-Nichols DoD Reorganization Act of 1986, is not actually within the DoD's chain of command. He has no authority to command combatant forces and cannot order military personnel to do much of anything. The chain of command runs from the commander in chief, Trump, to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and then to the commanders of the combatant commands. Nagl and Yingling do not address this in their letter.
"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," they write.
Nagy and Yingling cite Milley's participation in the president's clearing of Lafayette Square at the beginning of June as evidence of his willingness to be complicit in Trump's controversial decisions. Milley was present and photographed behind Trump in uniform -- an act that interpreted by some at the time as a political stance while in uniform. Milley later publicly admitted he regretted his presence there and how it was interpreted, calling it a mistake.
Milley says he was wrong to accompany Trump on church walk
“My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley said at the National Defense University a week after his appearance in Lafayette Square. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
The letter closes by restating the oath Milley took when he assumed the role of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and an admonition that "the fate of our Republic may well depend upon your adherence to this oath."
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