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Michael Flynn says Trump could impose 'martial law' in swing states to rerun polls, Internet slams 'insane rant'

'Flynn is working really hard to destroy us. It is unbelievable that he served in the military,' said a user

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday, December 17, that the POTUS could institute martial law to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office. His bizarre comments about Trump using his “military capabilities” to force various states to redo their elections were made during his appearance on Newsmax. 

“There is no way in the world we are going to be able to move forward as a nation. He could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these [voting] machines, on his order,” Flynn said, citing Trump's unfounded theories about voter fraud. “He could order the, within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities, and he could place those in states and basically rerun an election in each of those states. I mean, it’s not unprecedented. These people are out there talking about martial law like it’s something that we’ve never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times.”

As soon as a video of Flynn making the comments went viral on social media, he got slammed by a number of people. "This is scary stuff," one of them said, while another wrote, "There is no end to the crazy train." A third commented, "Here we go again. (Waiting for the nightmares to end.)" One more stated, "General Russian Agent." A commenter asked, "Question. Does Trumps Pardon work for future crime?"

The next enquired, "Just when did he loose (sic) his mind?" One more said, "There's a reason why he was fired by the Obama administration, I'm sure his brain broke right around that time. Getting fired seems to have really pushed him over the edge into some real darkness." Another remarked, "No he cannot do that. He would require consultation with congress or else they would shut him down immediately. Flynn is lying."

One more reacted with, "Lock him up. Oh wait, we did that already." Another pointed out, "Flynn is working really hard to destroy us. It is unbelievable that he served in the military. Just unbelievable. I hope there are not many others of his rank. I’m ashamed for Rhode Island that HOA is their native. Ugh."

Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, clarified on social media that there was no legal way for Trump to impose "martial law" to prevent Biden from getting inaugurated as the next president of the United States. "Dear Internet: Even if President Trump *were* to attempt to invoke the Insurrection Act, all that statute allows him to do is to use regular federal troops to enforce the *same* state and federal laws already administered by civilian authorities—not to 'impose martial law.' This 'martial law' stuff is nonsense. As #SCOTUS explained in 1866, it 'can never be applied ... where the courts are open and their process unobstructed.' And even if an Executive Order *tried* to change that (and the 2018 election interference EO doesn't), it *couldn't," he said in a series of tweets. 

Regarding Flynn's comment, he added, "Flynn’s insane rant is (I assume) relying upon the numerous invocations of martial law before during the Civil War—almost all of which were repudiated by #SCOTUS in 1866, when it wrote that it “can never be applied ... where the courts are open and their process unobstructed.”