Flashback: Trump's Plan for the Military to Seize Voting Machines
Donald Trump made headlines by firing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown Jr., along with the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti.
The same night, he also fired the top legal officers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. These top service branch lawyers are known as The Judge Advocates General, or JAGs.
The JAG Corps, Explained
JAGs have a number of responsibilities. They make sure military personnel don’t mistreat detainees. They prosecute members who violate military code.
They also provide legal advice to military leadership regarding combat rules and legal restrictions that apply to the military’s actions.
It’s illegal for DOD officers and employees to interfere with a JAG giving legal advice to the Secretary of Defense or any military commander.1 They must remain independent from politics.
So why fire the senior JAG in each military branch?
According to Secretary Hegseth, Trump fired them so they won't be "roadblocks to anything that happens."
Trump Wanted the Military to Seize Voting Equipment Following the 2020 Election
The House January 6th Select Committee investigating Trump’s attempts to overturn the election obtained a draft executive order (ultimately never issued) that would have directed the Secretary of Defense to
“seize, collect, retain and analyze all machines, equipment, electronically stored information, and material records” from the 2020 election.
The draft order gave the Secretary of Defense 60 days to write an assessment of the 2020 election (apparently a ploy to keep Trump in power into February 2021).
Trump was personally involved plans to use the military to seize voting equipment, even though he was repeatedly told there was no legal basis to do so. Even Rudy Giuliani warned Trump he would “go to jail” for this.
The Guardrails are Off
Imagine it’s December 2026, just after the midterm elections. Majority control of the House is down to three races in California, New York, and Iowa that are headed for recounts.
The recounts proceed normally under state election law, with candidates having legal representation in a transparent process open to observers and the media. Democrats flip the California and New York seats, meaning they win control of the chamber and will be able to serve as a check on Trump’s legislative agenda.
Then, on January 1, 2027, just days before the new Congress is sworn in, Trump commands the Army to seize all the voting machines, ballots, and other election records from those two districts. He orders everything delivered to Speaker Mike Johnson so the House can conduct its own election audit with the assistance of DOGE and DOGE’s artificial intelligence tools. The only legal authority Trump cites for these actions is the U.S. Constitution.
This is where you’d want a politically independent Judge Advocate General to act as a “roadblock” and advise the Secretary of Defense and Chief of Staff of the Army that there’s no legal basis in the U.S. Constitution or elsewhere for the Army to enter states and seize election materials.
At risk of stating the obvious: our elections are safe and secure, and voters should feel proud participating in them. There are extensive safeguards against illegal voting, and numerous legal procedures to ensure officials reached the correct result. Adding the military to the equation can only cause more harm than good; there’s no legitimate reason—and no legal basis—to do it.
If the JAG Corps is loyal to the President instead of the rule of law, illegally impounding ballots is just one of the abuses we’ll need to worry about. I highly recommend this post over at The Contrarian for a full discussion of the important ways JAG attorneys have defending human rights in the past and the current emerging threats where we’ll need an independent JAG Corps going forward.
As it stands right now, there’s no one left—not even Rudy Giuliani—to tell Trump that his worst impulses about deploying the military on U.S. soil are illegal.