Secret Service Has No Set Plan If Trump Won’t Go

The Daily Beast reports:

If there are any checklists or plans, procedures or guidelines for the Secret Service to follow in the event of an autogolpe—a Latin American-style crisis where a sitting president refuses to transfer power—a half-dozen former officials privy to the government’s most sensitive contingency plans aren’t aware of them.

None would speak for the record, owing to both the secrecy of the plans and to the sensitivity of the moment: they don’t want to encourage President Donald Trump to cross a line that authorities haven’t conceived of.

The Daily Beast pressed these officials to run through scenarios on the grounds that Trump has made a sport of turning the inconceivable into the how the hell did that just happen?

Read the full article.

From the Secret Service itself: How they will handle it if Trump refuses to leave the White House on January 20. There’s no specific plan for this scenario, but he will be treated as a trespasser. https://t.co/POwhm9WJgt

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) December 23, 2020