Leaked video reveals ex-Trump official's plot to unleash military on Americans

Russell Vought, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget during Donald Trump's first term, was caught on video discussing plans to override objections from Defense Department officials to deploy the U.S. military against American citizens.

Vought discussed plans earlier this year to get around Pentagon bureaucrats by having Trump invoke the Insurrection Act and then order the military to put down protests, ProPublica reported Monday.

“We want to be able to shut down the riots and not have the legal community or the defense community come in and say, ‘That’s an inappropriate use of what you’re trying to do,’” Vought said.

The prospect of Trump deploying armed forces against U.S. citizens has come into focus in recent weeks after Trump mused about using the military against a group that he described as "the enemy within" that includes Democratic lawmakers such as Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA).

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This remark prompted Trump's former chief of staff, John Kelly, to publicly accuse his one-time boss of being a fascist while at the same time warning that he could deploy the military against American citizens in a second term.

In addition to Vought's remarks about the Insurrection Act, ProPublica reported that the former Trump OMB chief talked up plans to defund the Environmental Protection Agency and to completely demoralize the federal workforce to the point where they quit.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so."