Trump social media post suggests major strategy shift in Jan. 6 defense: report

Donald Trump recently shared a post to social media that he tried to activate the Insurrection Act as the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was unfolding — a move that may signal a new direction for his legal strategy, Newsweek reported.

The post says Trump was prevented from announcing his use of the act — which is only activated in extreme situations — on X because the platform, then known as Twitter, was removing his posts.

"If Trump's reposting is an endorsement of this theory, it is a big departure from his current defense in his election interference case. The former president's claim until now has been that he didn't know how serious the situation was at the Capitol building," Newsweek's Sean O'Driscoll writes.

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Among the four criminal cases facing Trump is his alleged attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the riot.

As Newsweek points out, the Insurrection Act allows the president to call in the military to put down a rebellion or extreme violence. It is very rarely used, with the last time being during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.

The law has been invoked a small number of times in the past century, most recently by then President George H.W. Bush to put down the Los Angeles riots in 1992 after the police beating of Rodney King.

Politico's Kyle Cheney wrote on X that Trump's "promoting the nonsense idea that he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act amid the violence on Jan. 6. If it were true (which it clearly is not), it would blow up his legal defenses and also would likely have triggered waves of violence."