Ex-Trump security head calls to arrest 'traitors' as GOP suspects 'cold civil war' brewing

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn is calling for the arrest of former government officials recorded discussing scenarios in which the federal government could be deemed illegitimate, as other Trump allies warn America’s “cold civil war” could turn hot.

“Find these traitors and arrest them,” Flynn wrote on X this week, tagging President Donald Trump.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) also amplified the recordings, calling them “unbelievably frightening” while adding that he hoped they would turn out to be “a deep fake or a bad practical joke.” In a follow-up post, he wrote that “the American people must not be kept in the dark” and accused a “media cartel” of ignoring the story.

Mike Howell, who worked as a DHS lawyer during Trump’s first term and now leads the Oversight Project, told Blaze News, where he is a contributor, that the country is at a breaking point.

“This country is in a cold civil war, but this kind of talk makes me think they don’t want it to remain cold,” Howell said. He added that he doesn’t know “how much evidence the government needs to see to finally do something about it.”

The recordings were posted by DataRepublican, the online handle of Jennica Pounds, a Utah-based software engineer whose government-spending research was promoted by Elon Musk during the Department of Government Efficiency push. Pounds was revealed in August to be a special government employee at the Department of Defense, a role she said began in July. She contends that members of the Democratic Socialists of America and former U.S. Agency for International Development staffers intend to borrow tactics from overseas “color revolutions” to cast the Trump administration as illegitimate after the midterms, with Democratic governors positioned to step into the void.

Her evidence includes short audio clips from an Aug. 13 call hosted by a nonprofit called Renew American Democracy. Raw Story could not independently verify the recordings or whether they were edited. On the call, a former USAID staffer who helps lead the group described a possible “acute legitimacy crisis” in the coming months or years “where literally, our federal government becomes illegitimate,” and said such a moment could be leveraged “for a big structural reform, you know, refounding moment.” Another participant said an allied coalition had “developed a set of red lines, that are now being refined in terms of indicators and metrics,” and was creating a “situation room” heading into the midterms.

In an excerpt Lee shared, one participant said that if the federal government is “deemed to be illegitimate,” governors would “become the leading governing authority.” Another participant, identified as a former State Department official, said states such as California and Illinois had expressed interest in planning for which government functions they might need to take on, including outreach to foreign governments. He stressed it was “not a concept for a secession.”

DataRepublican also posted what she said was a document, scraped from the group’s materials, laying out when a federal government “crosses the threshold into illegitimacy.” The criteria include an executive that “defies final orders of the courts,” takes actions “designed to prevent a lawfully elected successor from assuming power,” or deploys the military or law enforcement against voters, election officials, the press or peaceful assembly “in ways that make democratic participation impossible.” In her own summary, DataRepublican wrote that the criteria mean “if Trump lifts a finger against peaceful protesters, then he’s illegitimate.” The document itself warns that an undefined idea of illegitimacy “becomes a weapon for whichever side is losing.”

DataRepublican also accused Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) of “pre-conditioning” the public. Slotkin had warned at a Sept. 30 event that a president at risk of losing could “find a way for federal law enforcement or the military to seize ballots or voting machines,” Mediaite reported. The Justice Department plans to send federal election monitors to some counties, a move one Colorado county clerk called “potentially an intimidation technique.”

Slotkin is facing pressure from another Trump ally, too. Mike Davis, founder of the conservative Article III Project, this week asked the Justice Department to investigate her and scrutinize her staff, donors and colleagues.

Before joining the Heritage Foundation in 2018, Howell, an Emory Law graduate, was an attorney in DHS’s general counsel’s office. Heritage launched the Oversight Project in 2022, and it became a separate nonprofit last year, Bloomberg Law reported.

The former USAID staffer did not respond to Blaze’s request for comment, and the White House did not immediately respond to Blaze News’ request for comment.