Some of Donald Trump‘s closest aides tried to rope in a Pentagon official to overturn the result of 2020 election in hopes of helping the former US president retain power. According to “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl’s new book, the unprecedented effort involved former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump attorney Sidney Powell.
Flynn, who had just received an unconditional presidential pardon from Trump after pleading guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI during the Russia probe, called a senior intelligence official named Ezra Cohen, who previously worked under him at both the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Council.
“Where are you?” Flynn asked the Department of Defense (DoD) official, who said he was traveling in the Middle East.
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“Flynn told him to cut his trip short and get back to the United States immediately because there were big things about to happen,” according to the book, reports ABC News. Karl writes that Flynn told Cohen, “We need you,” and told the DoD official that “there was going to be an epic showdown over the election results.”
Flynn, according to the book, urged Cohen that “he needed to get orders signed, that ballots needed to be seized, and that extraordinary measures needed to be taken to stop Democrats from stealing the election.”
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“As Flynn ranted about the election fight, [Cohen] felt his old boss sounded manic,” Karl writes in the book. “He didn’t sound like the same guy he had worked for.” Cohen told Flynn the election was over and it’s time to “move on,” prompting the latter to fire back: “You’re a quitter! This is not over! Don’t be a quitter!”
The book also claims that Steven Mnuchin and Mike Pompeo, the treasury secretary and secretary of state under Donald Trump, discussed removing the former President after the US Capitol riots on January 6.
