Linda Bailey
CNBC’s Eamon Javers reports on a letter sent from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi detailing her conversation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on preventing Trump from initiating military hostilities during the remainder of his term. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: https://cnb.cx/2NGeIvi
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday that she spoke to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley about available precautions that would block “an unstable president” — Donald Trump — from “ordering a nuclear strike,” or even accessing nuclear launch codes and starting other military hostilities.
“The situation of this unhinged President could not be more dangerous, and we must do everything that we can to protect the American people from his unbalanced assault on our country and our democracy,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a letter to fellow Democratic lawmakers.
Pelosi reported later told lawmakers at a meeting that Milley had assured her that there are currently steps that would prevent Trump from ordering a nuclear launch.
A spokesman for the Office of the Joint Chiefs said Pelosi initiated a call with Milley and “he answered her questions regarding the process of nuclear command authority.”
The Pentagon and the National Security Council did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.
Pelosi’s letter comes two days after a mob of Trump supporters rioted outside and inside the U.S. Capitol on the heels of a rally where the president encouraged them to “fight” with him to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the next president of the United States. Five people, including a Capitol police officer, died in connection with the riot.
The section of the letter referring to her conversation with Milley is entitled, “Preventing an Unhinged President From Using the Nuclear Codes.”
“This morning, I spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike,” Pelosi wrote.
Air Force General John Hyten, who currently is vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, three years ago said during a speech that he would resist executing an order from Trump to launch nuclear weapons if he considered such an order “illegal.”
Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democratic lawmakers have demanded that Trump be removed from office, either through invocation of the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, or via impeachment.
In her letter, Pelosi told lawmakers that, “Nearly fifty years ago, after years of enabling their rogue President, Republicans in Congress finally told President [Richard] Nixon that it was time to go.”
“Today, following the President’s dangerous and seditious acts, Republicans in Congress need to follow that example and call on Trump to depart his office – immediately. If the President does not leave office imminently and willingly, the Congress will proceed with our action.”
James Schlesinger, who was Nixon’s secretary of Defense, has said that during the final days of the Watergate crisis, he ordered military commanders to contact him or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger if Nixon directed a nuclear launch.
At the time, Nixon was drinking heavily as he lost public and Congressional support.
During one meeting, according to “The Final Days,” a book about the end of his presidency, Nixon told a group of congressmen, “I can go into my office and pick up a telephone and in 25 minutes millions of people will be dead.”
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