'Sedition': Experts respond to the shocking demand Trump institute martial law
In conversations with 34 members of congress, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, at least one was encouraging Meadows to tell the president to institute martial law so that he could take over the country and stop the election.
The thousands of previously deleted text messages were not revealed publicly before today, but it appears to have come from the information Meadows turned over to the House-Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Addressing some of the things said by officials, legal experts largely questioned the misspelling of martial law as "Marshall Law" by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC).
Political strategist Rachel Bitecofer was aghast "the entire constitutional order was almost eviscerated by people who call martial law Marshall Law."
There were others who jumped into the pool of analysis, however.
National security and legal analyst Marcy Wheeler explained that when Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith she "suggested the narrow GOP majority in the House might be as much an exceptional circumstance as Trump's announcement, in part because Jim Jordan was overseeing DOJ. It's texts like this one, from Ralph Norman, espousing Martial Law, that could drive this. Is such a text protected by Speech and Debate? Dunno, probably not. If not, this is the kind of thing that DOJ used for prosecution against others."
Associate professor of political science at Northeastern Illinois University, William Adler pointed to the key piece of information as something he cared about far more than Hunter Biden's laptop.
Atlantic writer and international affairs expert, Tom Nichols, implored followers not to blow off the news story.
"Do not shrug this off. A member of the Congress of the United States wanted the outgoing president to invoke martial law, and use the arms of the United States military to prevent the new president from taking office. Sedition," Nichols said. He also mocked the spelling of martial. "It’s bad enough to be a seditionist and an enemy of the constitution. But you’d think that a guy who wants a coup might at least be able to spell 'martial.'"
Legal expert Don Winslow noted that the text messages that Meadows exchanged with 34 members of Congress were "about overthrowing the government and not one of them has faced any consequences. Not. One."
Lawyer George Conway, however, crafted the perfect legal defense: "The GOP congressman who called for 'Marshall Law!!' in a text to Meadows obviously must have thought he was participating in a coo, not a coup, and so is clearly off the hook."