the washington post tonight is reporting
that among the things the january 6th
investigation in congress is looking at
is a number of different ways that the
trump hit that trump and his
administration and people around him
tried to get him to use the emergency
powers of the president
which technically at least are a very
limited thing but how he tried to use
them or considered using them to
overthrow the election the post
reporting tonight that quote three days
before biden's inauguration
congresswoman marjorie taylor greene
texted the white house chief of staff
and told him that some republican
members of congress believe the only
path for president trump to change the
outcome of the election and stay in
power was for him to declare martial law
the text from greene which was revealed
this week brought to the fore the chorus
of republicans who were publicly and
privately advocating for trump trying to
try to use the military and defense
apparatus of the u.s government to
strong-arm his way past an electoral
defeat
now
discussions involving the trump white
house about using emergency powers
have become an important but little
known part of the january 6th
investigation of the attack on the
capital the post says quote in subpoenas
document requests and court filings the
panels demanded information about any
trump administration plans to use
presidential emergency powers to invoke
martial law or take other steps to
overturn the election interviews with
committee members and a review of the
panel's information requests reveals a
focus on emergency powers that were
being considered by trump and his allies
in several categories
invoking the insurrection act declaring
martial law using presidential powers to
justify seizing voting machines
and using the military to require a
rerun of the election
again the post reporting that those
efforts to use presidential emergency
powers to overthrow the election is a
new and largely um sort of overlooked
publicly and publicly overlooked part of
what the january 6 investigation is
looking at
what does this new reporting mean um and
and
is this a whole new level of seriousness
we hadn't really considered before
uh joining us now is elizabeth coyteen
she is co-director of the liberty and
national security program at the brennan
center for justice and she's in fact one
of the experts on presidential emergency
powers is quoted in the post reporting
today in the post reporting she argues
that the emergency powers quote contain
fundamental flaws that could lead to
abuse and she has said that these
emergency powers should be a focus of
the january 6 investigation
ms goyten it's a real pleasure to have
you with us tonight thank you
thanks so much for having me
so i've always sort of been led to
believe that emergency powers
for president or indeed an
administration particularly around
elections are quite limited but it
sounds like the january 6 investigators
have got their teeth into a number of
different ways that those powers were at
least attempted to be tapped by trump
and his allies in
2020. i think the truth lies somewhere
between uh what you thought about
emergency powers and what uh you know
michael flynn and sydney powell and and
uh marjorie taylor queen were urging
president trump to do emergency powers
do not give the president limitless
ability to do whatever he wants such as
seizing voting machines and overturning
the results of an election in fact there
are no emergency powers that would allow
a president to overturn
the results of an election after those
results are in
however there are emergency powers
available to the president that are
disturbingly broad and that lack
checks and balances that are necessary
to ensure that they can't be used in
ways that could undermine our democracy
in other ways so i think it is
absolutely a legitimate cause for
concern something the january 6
committee should be looking at very
closely
one of the key
points of any congressional
investigation i mean sort of a point
almost literally one of the key aims um
the one of the key reasons to justify
creating congressional investigations
is to recommend legislative changes
since that after all is the main purview
of congress
if the january 6 investigators are
looking at this obviously it's going to
potentially reveal more to us about what
the components were of the plot and who
was trying to get away with what but is
it conceivable to you as an expert in
this field that they could also
recommend practical changes that the
congress itself could fix ahead of the
2024 election to alleviate some of the
concerns that you're just describing
absolutely let's take the national
emergencies act which allows the
president to declare a national
emergency pretty much within his
discretion just by signing an executive
order and then that declaration unlocks
enhanced powers that are contained in
more than 120 different laws
some of those powers
are what keep me awake at night
including
laws that would allow the president to
take over or shut down communications
facilities laws that would allow the
president to freeze americans assets and
prevent anyone from doing any kind of
financial transaction with them
laws that even allow the president to
suspend the prohibition on
uh
government testing of chemical and
biological agents on unwitting human
subjects there are emergency powers that
allow these things so absolutely i think
congress be thinking about uh
ways to bring in some of these emergency
powers but also the very basic check
that congress should be able to shut
down an abuse of emergency powers by the
president and right now the only way
congress can do that is to pass a law by
a veto proof super majority
and there are better ways to do it such
as
allowing an emergency declaration to
stay in effect for 30 days but to
terminate at that point
if congress hasn't approved the
declaration and that's
part of some legislation that's been
considered by congress now one other law
that i think is important to look at is
the insurrection act and this is a law
that allows the president again with a
tremendous amount of discretion
to deploy federal troops to act as a
domestic police force and that is
something that in general our laws our
constitution really frown on that
because the founders knew that an army
turned inward can quickly become an
instrument of tyranny
but this law the insurrection act is
really an exception it gives the
president a tremendous discretion to
deploy troops to address not only
insurrections
as the name would suggest but also to
address domestic violence which isn't
defined
to address unlawful combinations or
conspiracies again
not defined so this very vague and
frankly archaic language the statute
hasn't been updated in 150 years
gives the president a dangerous amount
of authority again what it needs is more
specific definitions and checks and
balances
some provision for congress and the
courts to step in if the president
overreaches
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